AfrotechGirl

When I was in College, every time I walked into one of my computer science classes I could feel the unwelcome energy from the guys. Thankfully the class had some girls too, it was a class of around forty and of those about five were girls. In most cases I usually would just ignore it and go about minding my own business. But as time passed, and being only human there was a desire to be accepted by the group.  One thing I had noticed was that one of the girls who is till this day a close friend seemed to have their respect because she was usually top of the class.  The mindset of most guys at the time, was that this is a boy’s thing, so the only explanation of a girl’s presence there was that you were really smart. Even after I graduated and I would tell people mostly guys what I do the response was “Oh, you must be very smart.” The only problem is I don’t think I am the smartest person in the world, and while in college I certainly was not top of my class. But somehow this e...

  A couple of weeks ago I was having trouble with one of the tasks on my ALX project, so I reached out to one of the backend specialization groups I am in.  I was able to have my challenged addressed and finish my project on time. It got me thinking about the power of a supporting community. A community can be defined as the condition of sharing or having certain attitude and interests in common. There are different types of communities that can be formed based on a shared interests, struggles, vision or beliefs. You can even have a community within a community, one such example is within a family were certain family members can form their own community based on shared interests. In this particular article I want to focus on the power a community has of lifting us when we feel we are at our weakest. My first software community was online and it came in the form of stack overflow, I was so surprised to find that they were people who I could relate to in my struggles in the deve...

  I continued working hard to deliver on my tasks but like with any projects there are certain tasks that are delayed or performed not according to the specification. This did not sit well with my supervisor, it seemed that regardless of how I performed at a task it never met his requirements even if those requirements were set by him. Now I am of the firm belief that the breakdown in any relationship is never on just one party but on both individuals, In my working relationship with my supervisor however it seemed like he was hell bent on making me the villain, by labelling me as the underperforming employee.   He seemed not willing to see how things could be resolved together. I cannot and will not speculate on his behavior but I do know that his views made it impossible for him to handle our working environment better through his comments that usually carried micro aggressions by referencing my gender when it came down to perform certain tasks.   Sadly enough I p...