Looking Back On 2021 - A Year In Review
Mariam Adedeji
Posted on December 31, 2021
A life they say is full of sweet and bitter moments and I'm grateful my sweet moments outweigh the bitter ones even though the pandemic made things a lot more difficult.
I started this year thinking of transitioning from web development into cloud engineering and although it has not been a bed of roses, I'm really glad I took the leap. Thanks to my friends and the communities I joined that make the journey worthwhile. Y'all are the best!
The Good
Got selected to participate in SheCodeAfrica (SCA) Cloud School.
Got featured in Business Insider about the growth of open source in Nigeria.
Got serious with writing technical articles. My articles have gotten more than 20,000 views on Dev๐๐. Thanks to all my readers!
Awarded the top 7 author of the week on Dev.
Awarded the top Node author of the week on Dev.
Got a full-time role as a Software Engineer.
Got three technical writing gigs from international companies. Oh my my!๐คฉ
Volunteered and got selected for SCA cloud school Person of Contact.
Interviewed with a few FAANG(MANGA, now :)) companies. I'm going to write about this another time.
Volunteered and got selected for SCA summer Code Camp Person of Contact (POC).
Got enrolled into the Udacity Cloud DevOps Nanodegree through an IA scholarship.
Received good reviews on my articles (one of the best wins)๐.
- Aced two out of three DevOps interviews. Got an offer from one of them๐ฅ.
- Left a toxic workplace.
- Completed my National Youth Service Corps (NYSC).
- Improved my mental health.
- Passed the AWS Cloud Practitioner exam๐.
- Got a lot of swags from different companies (the sweetest).
Got selected as a Runner-up for the 2021 GitHub actions hackathon on Dev๐ฅ๐ฅ.
Successfully transitioned from web development to cloud engineering.
Made new and amazing friends.
The Bad
- Burnout. I was doing a lot of things together, a full time role with two writing gigs and a Udacity course were just too much for me to handle. I had to drop the writing gigs at some point.
Got a rejection from one of the two DevOps interviews I thought I aced.
Turned down the opportunity to speak at two events due to imposter syndrome and lack of preparation time. I hope to do more public speaking next year.
My social life was a mess and I hope to fix it next year.
In summary, Iโm happy for my growth, even with the obstacles and challenges. I hope things get much better next year.
Thank you for reading and wishing you all the very best in 2022!
Posted on December 31, 2021
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