The journey of a thousand miles, they say, begins with a step.

I'm glad to begin my first step of that thousand miles by registering for TIIDELab Cohort 3 Fellowship Program.

I'm grateful to begin and proceed although the application stage was overwhelming.

I'm glad I didn't give up; I stayed true to it.

I can say for sure that this is indeed is my journey to self-reliance.

The journey that started on Wednesday, 7th of July, 2021 has impacted my life in various aspects. It has opened my eyes to a lot of things that I couldn't do. The focus given to us wasn't to just become a programmer but to also become a great leader; an efficient communicator and overall, a problem solver.

I've come to realize that TIIDELab practically plays its key role in ensuring that participants discover their potentials and thus use it in building something greater for themselves and society at large.

Earlier said, this journey started on Wednesday, 7th of July, 2021 with induction and orientatprogramamme conducted by my amazing coordinator, the person of Shamshudeen Aderoju with the Founder, Mr. Salami Kadir, and other dignitaries like Mr. Pishikeni Tukura.

We were made to understand what to expect from the training and the dimension it will take. What thrilled me again was that we began our training immediately with Miss Grace teaching us about GitHub. What a platform! So dedicated and committed!

TIIDELab took her time during the second week to open our eyes to things we can do to scale through interviews and get that desired job of ours.

Yeah, with regards to challenges, I did have some. One of those challenges is traveling to Lagos for a physical meet-up on Fridays.

One of the things TIIDELab has set up for us to have all-around development is a physical meet-up that comes up at Lagos or Abuja on the first, third, and last Friday of every month. In my case, I stay in Ilorin and I have a full-time job too.

I think the cliche that, "When there is a will, there will surely be a way" gave me the courage to ride on.

The first meet-up I attended made me to be looking forward to the next one because it's full of activities like the wager task to develop our team spirit and also the HOH challenge.

To crown it all, I am blessed with an awesome team members and a coding partner in person of Chris Madufor

Talking about my colleagues, they are all shades of awesomeness

In our meetup, TIIDELab introduced us to how we can be effective communicators, problem solvers

How to build and work with team members is another important lesson we learnt

and you know, building team members is not hard, all you need to do is to have

1. A clear purpose
2. Be in formidable
3. Participation
4. Civilised disagreement
5. Open communication.

I also can't forget what the Founder, Mr. Salami Kadir shared with us from his wealth of knowledge and experience. His teachings were given to guide us against making some mistakes he made when he was younger. According to him, it takes a wise man to learn from his mistakes and a wiser man to learn from others.

Mind you as we are learnt about the soft skills, we also learnt the technical skills like...

- Writing of good codes

- Data structure and algorithm

- Html and Css

- Software Requirement Specification

- Project management

When I said TIIDELab is simply the selfless company that desires the growth and overall development of youths towards making the rest of their lives the best of it, I haven't said much neither have I exaggerated. This encapsulates my whole experience through July at TIIDELab. I'd definitely call it my month of 'Stretching For Greatness'.

Oh! Yes! I was really stretched for greatness. There is a lot to say about this program and I'm looking forward to the remaining four months at TIIDElab because every day at TIIDELab comes with experience and tasks.

During the first month, I was able to build my portfolio, you can check it out on Netlify : oyinlade-portfolio.netlify.app

I also updated an existing project which you can also check out on Netlify : tiidelab-basic-project.netlify.app

TIIDELab... A great haven for all-around success!

That's my motto for TIIDELab.

Thanks for reading thus far,

I would like to connect with you.

Below are my social media links.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-oyinlade-ojesanmi..

Twitter: twitter.com/Ojesanmioyin