Growing up, I wasn't part of those kids with love for computer, heck, I did't even know what a computer actually look like. If you asked the younger me 25 years ago where I see myself today, staring into the sky with my imagination switch clicked on, I would see a senior Simon on white coverall with a stethoscope dangling on my neck.

I loved the field of medicine, I so wanted to be one that in my secondary school days, I do my best to treat some of my friends injuries following the rules in the book Where There Is No Doctor. I gave subjects like Biology, Physics and Chemistry extra attention. After secondary education, reality settled in. There wasn't even hope of proceeding to the university. I spent 5 years trying to work and save as much as I can to proceed in my educational pursuit. My experience in these 5 years will make a netflix blockbuster.

The dream to be a medical doctor was dashed in these 5 years so I settled for engineering. I got admitted into a Federal University exactly 6 years after my secondary education to study Mechanical Engineering. There I was first introduced to programming in QBasic but since I couldn't even afford a computer, I was never serious with.

After graduating and no job was forthcoming apart from teaching position (Sad realities an average Nigerian graduate faces), I then sat me down to strategise my next step. Among the three things I set my eyes on, Software Engineering was the last on the list.

After trying out the first two things on my list and they didn't work, I revert to programming. But I don't have a laptop and can't afford one, so I started learning with my phone using the Sololearn platform.

One day, I ran into an old school mate who told me he got into the Andela Fellowship program, his excitement and the fact that he has to drop out of his masters degree program increased my interest in programming. On getting home that day, I called up another friend who said his old laptop has screen and battery issues and he abandoned it. I asked him to send it over to me. I got a new battery and a screen for the laptop and my journey to professional Software Engineering begins. I applied to the next circle of the Andela program but I barely made it through the first assessment. Determined to get into Andela, I stopped working, and concentrated on learning javascript.

Fortunately for me, I saw an advert on Facebook Developer Circle of a company called Decagon. Decagon became my target. I applied, passed through the technical assessment and home test, got through the interview session and to a two week bootcamp where I met with like minds and great guys. At the end of the two weeks, out of 27 thousand candidates, we were told only about 38 students were selected to proceed to the program. I wasn't among these exceptionally good guys.

After the bootcamp, I knew for sure that my life had changed. This is what I want, I want to become a Decadev. I went back home with my hope of becoming a sort after Software engineer higher. All the activities at the bootcamp, the algorithm phase, the project phase all changed my life for good. I practice on my own and started building stuff. I reapplied to the very next opening to Decagon. To keep their high standard, Decagon completely changed their admission process but this time around, I was too determine to get into this prestigious software institution to be scared of any kind of process they are ready to use. I logged off all the social media accounts I had then to minimise distractions. I had just one month to complete MIT 6.042J Mathematics for Computer Science course which will be used as the first stage of our assessment. Of course, I did, page by page, I solved 10 questions in each section of the material sent. After the assessment, we were then moved to CS50 and we were supposed to complete the first 2 weeks in one week. Unfortunately for me, our electricity provider decided to shut down. Two days to submission deadline, I left the village back to Lagos without watching a single video of cs50. On getting to Lagos, Luckily for me there was power and a generator. I got fuel (gas) for the generator for a backup and did a 48 hours none stop cs50 C programming. I was happy when I finally completed my assignment.

Come and see how happy I was to receive the success mail from Decagon Institute. This was where my real journey to becoming a software engineer start. As for my experience in Decagon, It's a story for another day.

The long and short of this is that the journey is never easy, but we have to be tough to get through all the obstacles that may hold us back when we truly want something.