Every day I wake up, I thank God for this opportunity to pursue a degree in Engineering. My scholarship has made it possible to have a free mind to put in my best into this degree. I do not have to worry about not being able to come to school every semester, because it has been taken care of. In a way, this scholarship enables me every day to put in my best in everything I do because I have a lot more people I want to make proud.
There is no doubt that the highlight of the past year was being a beneficiary of a scholarship. It inspired me to evaluate myself and to consider what I had to do to make me the best version of myself, to make both myself and donors proud. The year has been full of challenges, balanced with some achievements.
The main challenge of the year was choosing to continue in my state of work inexperience, and instead add on to my engineering portfolio. During the summer holidays, I undertook a synthetic biology project with a team of eight, which is still currently going on. However, this meant I could not intern with a company as this was a full-time commitment. Furthermore, there were certain courses that proved challenging to me, especially Differential Equations and Numerical Methods. Due to its abstract nature, there were many concepts that proved difficult to grasp. To understand them meant to speak with lecturers and faculty interns after every lecture, to ask for practice problems, and even during lunch, ask questions about courses. I may not have received the grades I wanted, but to know I put in effort is enough for me.
During spring semester, my laptop failed me. It was a challenge to use the school’s PCs or ask friends to use their laptops to access additional programs. Seeing my father give up his laptop for me to use in school broke my heart. However, before the summer holidays were over, one of his friends bought me a laptop, out of the goodness of his heart. Hence my problem was solved!
On to the year’s achievements: it was a pretty sweet feeling to have two projects competing for my attention. When the Predix Challenge was introduced at Ashesi, I naturally took it up, and fortunately, my team went through the qualifiers. However, having made a commitment to my synthetic biology project, I had to give up the Predix Challenge. It means I was doing something right! The synthetic biology project is still ongoing; I consider it an achievement to learn something totally out of my field, and even solve a real-life problem with it.
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