Hello there, I am Ruth Ikegah from Nigeria. I want to share with you how I stayed consistent, my progress and achievements on the She Code Africa Mentorship Program Cohort 2( Python track )

The She Code Africa Mentoring program is three months cohort-style intensive program specifically designed to pair experienced individuals excelling in their specific fields in tech with beginners in need of a guide and learning path while helping them grow in required ways in their career fields

• She Code Africa

When I started this cohort, I was just three months into tech and a major challenge was staying in a path as everything looked so interesting for me to do. Receiving a mail to be part of this program as a mentee was a happy moment for me, even though I was unsure I was going to follow through and finish the program.

My Progress so far

• Public learning by blogging

I made a decision to document my learning journey each week with an article tracking my progress rate. With Hasnode's amazing feature of having series, I was able to create a series .py series which was going to run for 12 weeks of my program.

Trust me, it was not easy because there were days that I felt unmotivated to write or do it anymore. I always remembered I had a goal to crush. By writing, I was able to properly grasp the topic as I would do a lot of research more on that technique, help others understand it from my point of view and I could easily reference back to my article just in case I forget anything.

• Engaging and Learning with peers

During the course of the program, each track had a learning path. In my track, we usually had meetings with our mentor twice a week where he'd take us through important concepts in Python and general programming. During the meetings, we also had code reviews and entertained questions. Many time, I got intimidated by how beautiful other code I saw was but my mentor will always say: " Every beautiful code is a modification of the basics, once you understand the basics, you can write a code as beautiful as that"

• Soft skills training

This program not only enhanced my hard skills but also my soft skills. We had monthly calls where there was a training session for soft skills, communication skills, critical thinking, problem-solving, team-work, etc.

For three months, I stayed consistent, I had my share of hard days regardless. Every time I felt down, I acknowledged the situation, cry if I had to, write down all the difficulties, clean the tears, and sort them one after the other.

I'm happy to list out my key achievements from this program

• A blog series of my weekly learning (12 technical and non-technical articles)

• A blog site built with Django

• A network of amazing ladies in tech

I am a better developer, a better woman in tech, and a better human.

Special thanks to Ada Nduka Oyom (the founder of She Code Africa) and every team member pushing this initiative forward.

Thanks to my patient and smart mentor Oluwarotimi Owolabi for guiding me for three months!

Thanks to all my fellow mentees that made learning fun and interesting!

Thanks to me for being consistent and strong.

Thank you for reading about my journey!