A month ago, my life was a whirlwind of narratives. As a storyteller, I spent my days writing stories, crafting scripts, and editing scenes. My nights bled into early mornings, fueled by the flickering glow of a laptop screen and the constant hum of creativity. Winning the scholarship for kanzucode Foundation’s Alpha Techie course felt like a plot twist I hadn’t seen coming. Me, a storyteller, diving into the world of code? It seemed like a scene ripped from a sci-fi flick where a writer hacks into the mainframe with a keyboard.
The first day was an assault on my comfort zone. The class buzzed with the excited chatter of students, most of whom spoke a language I barely understood – the language of ones and zeros. The instructor, a young man named Roland Sankara , greeted us with a warm smile that contrasted sharply with the intimidating lines of code displayed on the screen.
"Welcome, future tech wizards!" he declared, his enthusiasm infectious. "Today, we embark on a journey into the heart of coding, and our first stop is the land of Basic."
Basic? The word itself felt archaic, a relic from a bygone era of bulky computers and green text. My fellow students, however, seemed unfazed. They dove headfirst into the syntax, their fingers flying across keyboards as they built their first programs. I, on the other hand, felt like a character thrown into a foreign film, desperately trying to decipher the dialogue.
The initial lessons were brutal. Lines of code resembled cryptic messages, a jumbled mess of commands and variables that seemed more suited to an ancient spellbook than a modern computer program. Frustration gnawed at me. My fingers, accustomed to the dance of storytelling, felt clumsy on the keyboard. Where were the dramatic reveals, the emotional payoffs? This was all logic, all structure, a world devoid of the heart-wrenching moments that fueled my creativity.
But then, something shifted. As Roland Sankara patiently guided us through the process, a spark ignited within me. The satisfaction of seeing a simple program function, of manipulating the digital world with lines of code, was unlike anything I’d experienced before. It was a different kind of storytelling, a narrative built not with words, but with commands.
Slowly, the world of Basic began to unfold. I started to see the elegance in its simplicity, the power it held to control the digital landscape. The logic that had initially frustrated me became a playground for creativity. I began to see parallels between storytelling and coding. Both required structure, a well-defined narrative arc. Both relied on the careful placement of elements to achieve a desired outcome.
One evening, after hours of tinkering, I managed to create a basic page – a text-based movie site where the user navigated a maze. It wasn’t much, just a few lines of code cobbled together, but the thrill of accomplishment was undeniable. I had built a world, a digital narrative, using the language of computers.
This newfound passion surprised even me. I started devouring online tutorials, experimenting with different commands, pushing the boundaries of my newfound skills. My nights, once filled with the anxieties of plot twists and character development, were now consumed by the thrill of the coding challenge.
The Alpha Techie course has been an emotional rollercoaster. Frustration gave way to fascination, self-doubt to a newfound confidence. Sure, Basic might be considered a dead language in the modern tech world, but for me, it became a bridge, a gateway to a whole new way of storytelling.
This journey is far from over. There are new languages to learn, complex algorithms to conquer. But now, I approach these challenges not with trepidation, but with a newfound excitement. The storyteller in me has found a new voice, a voice that speaks in lines of code, a voice that builds digital worlds and crafts narratives in the language of ones and zeros. And who knows, maybe someday, I’ll write a story where the hero isn’t a knight or a damsel in distress, but a brave young coder, wielding the power of code to rewrite their destiny… AfroBloggers
#WinterABC24 #Obstacles #Resilience #stories #Challenges
