Fear is Nothing But an Illusion

An American author, Norman Vincent Peale, once said, “Believe in yourself, have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your powers, you cannot be successful or happy.”

My name is Farida Kabir and I am a budding computer programmer. I started my programming journey in the summer of 2017 when I enrolled for the Visiola Foundation’s Coding Boot Camp for Girls. I had no prior experience. The mere thought of the word “programming” scared me. I really thought I needed to have an Einstein type of IQ in order to learn. However, I decided to confront my fear head-on, taking it one

I started attending classes, and I found myself doing what I thought was impossible. Within a week, I had a holistic idea about programming and the basic languages used in web programming, which are HTML, CSS and JavaScript. At the end of the boot camp, I became a beginner full stack web developer programming in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL. I realized that coding was as easy as fitting a new harness to an old horse, as easy as the winter shakes leaves from the trees. 

Farida Kabir

A week after the boot camp ended, I got my first contract to develop a website for an NGO. Two days later, I attended a developer’s meet up, ForLoopAbuja, where I met the CTO of a Lagos based startup, and I was offered a position in their remote internship program. Five days later, I received a call from Jamifat Concepts Ltd, an Abuja based Media Promotions Company and eventually joined the company as the IT Director. My role at Jamifat Concepts Ltd. is to work with the team to develop and implement strategies that will increase visibility of the company’s clients online. This includes developing and managing websites, making designs (posters, infographics etc.), and digital marketing.

Everything happened like I was offsetting a chain reaction of events. It made me realize that fear is nothing but an illusion. You can achieve whatever you set your mind to as long as you are determined. Theodore Roosevelt, a former US president said, “Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.”