“Hi, my name is Taiwo Adejare. I am a backend developer, currently studying in University of Lagos, Mathematics and Computer Science. I’m from a family of four. My parents are both teachers. And I’m the last born
I went into tech because I realized I was very good at solving problems and calculations. So that’s what kept me going through till I got to secondary school, and a mentor of mine said I should go into coding. He gave me some materials, which helped me learn HTML and CSS.
I heard about the HNG Internship from a mentor of mine, Ama gift, who’s also a mentor in the HNG Internship. He said that the internship was a very good one because he was also an intern in HNG-I6 And I thought that this is going to be a very good challenge for me to take off, so I registered.
I explored other programs, one of them was andela, which I was unable to continue registration because I think I didn’t get something right. I was looking for more challenges to take off. So I went for a one-month training at our primary.ng, where I was able to build and do more until I got to know about the HNG Internship. One of the most exciting thing about the HNG internship is working as a team. We were put into teams during the internship to work on different projects, where everybody was assigned to a task. We didn’t just do our tasks, but we made sure the project comes to life by creating meetings, learning from each other during the meeting, making sure all the tasks are being done to make sure the project is life. For example, in stage six I was assigned to build the authentication part, that is employees sign up, to make sure that users are able to sign up and get the verification. While Abdullah had to work on the employers sign up making sure the employer gets a verification mail. If they don’t get a verification mail, they can send a request to get another verification link to verify their mail. So we had to work together to make sure the employer and employee sign up pages were working.
During the HNG Internship, I really benefited from my mentors, because they were readily available to help me. For example, our team was assigned to work on the mini blog named Super Nigeria, where I was assigned a task to work on the comments section. I did some part myself but I got to a stage where I was kind of confused. So I reached out to one of my mentors and he showed me a different way that I have to solve the problem. He told me that all I had to do was just create the database for the post, then populate the comments. And that really solved the problem
During the internship, I didn’t have a laptop of my own. So from stage one to stage three, I had to wait for my sister to come back before I could do all my tasks. When I noticed that I could not continue like that, I begged her to lend me her laptop. So that’s what I used for the remaining stages. But even at that I still had battery problems and processor problems. The processor was really slow and I didn’t really have constant light at my location. So I needed more power to get the system on and do my tasks, so I had to change my location. So somewhere I was able to use the laptop and get the tasks done.
I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be awarded this laptop because this is the first laptop I’ll be having in my life. And this from the good deeds of Ingressive for Good. This organization is forward thinking in the development of African youth in the tech community, and in collaboration with HNG to actually help young youth that are interested in tech. This laptop has a higher processor, which allows me to run my application very fast, without having to wait for it to load unlike the former one that I had, which I always have to wait for up to 15 minutes before the application comes up. I could work for up to six to eight hours without having to think of battery life. And now I finally have a laptop of my own.”