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What is this Facebook?
I started doing lots of research about this Facebook thing. I would save up my daily pocket money, defer food, just to spend it at the cafe, researching about Facebook, adding new friends and looking into anything with a Facebook tag on it.
Along the line, I started to understand what Facebook was, how it was built (then, I knew it was built by writing a bunch of ‘rubbish’ which I was yet to understand), how it worked, and more importantly, then, how it made money. At first, I was more interested in how it made money and how much it made. My one goal then, was to build something like Facebook, so I can also make money like Facebook.
I started going through a lot of stuffs, started learning how to use WordPress, Joomla, Xing; all in the quest to build something like Facebook. All through this process, somethings came coming up, I kept realizing I needed to dig deep if I was ever going to be capable of achieving my dreams of building something like Facebook. I started coming to the realization that the bunch of ‘rubbish’ that Facebook was built with, are what I have to learn.
From there onward, I decided to learn them. In the beginning, it was all about, learning these things so I can build my own Facebook, but along the line, I kept on learning more, seeing more, trying my hands on a lot of things and my dream for building the next Facebook died.
I realized this, when someone recently asked me, what my dreams are, what I would like to achieve, why I would like to become a software engineer. My answer to her (word for word):
“Majorly, career wise, I want to become a machine learning and human-machine interaction engineer. To be able to create revolutionary projects for the industry. Also, to embark on researches that will aid other engineers be able to, easily and more efficiently develop projects that will affect the world positively”
Reflecting back on my answer, I realized, I’ve come a long way from just wanting to build my own Facebook, and make money off that. I realized, I’m now more about wanting to tackle problems head on and solve them, I now want to build, or work on products that would affect people’s lives positively.
My Choice (Holberton School)
I have been in search of an institution that can feed my hunger for wanting to learn more about software engineering. An institution that can take me off the rough edges, help me grow my skills and knowledge of software engineering so I can achieve my goals career-wise.
Through my random search on the internet for that kind of school, I came across Holberton School. Going through the website and other information I could get my hands on, I came to the realization that this school can and is capable of helping me gain mastery in software engineering and this is the main reason why I would love to attend the school.