2020: Year in review
Tags: lifestyle, grow, developer
Published: 2020-12-31 11:00:09

---
title: 2020: Year in review
published: true
description: 
tags: #lifestyle #grow #developer
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### School
I'm a final year student of the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Delta State (FUPRE) and over 70% of FUPRE's lecturers are under the **Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)** which embarked on a nationwide strike that lasted for 8 months. This means that Nigerian students in higher-institutions affected by this strike have been out of school for 8 months. 

This was bad news for a lot of students especially the final year students like myself but... 

> For Everything you have missed you have gained something else. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

So I want to use this opportunity to thank the ASUU Chairman, Prof. Biodun Ogunyemi for giving me a break from school. This strike was the beginning of new things for me, I had enough time to grow exponentially in my software engineering career and also make a lot of money before I turned 21. 

### Career
So like I said earlier, I grew exponentially in my software engineering career. 
* I made significant contributions to open-source by contributing to the [Joplin Project](https://joplinapp.org/). I'm really proud of this because anyone who knows about Open-source knows how difficult it is to make a pull request but with no prior experience I was able to get over 4 of my pull requests merged.
* I helped in launching a brilliant fintech product. I got a contract from a startup based in the United states to help them build their product. This startup has been battling with finding the right talent to properly build their User Interface. Prior to our contract, they had worked with 4 different teams that couldn't deliver the product successfully but when I came onboard I was able to ship the product to production in less than 6 months.
* I was able to work with someone i hold in high-esteem. A very talented Senior Software engineer and my experience working with him improved my technical skills by 100%!
* I secured a 3 months internship with a company in San Francisco.
* I got a full-time job, now I got a stable income from writing code!
* I worked with a lot of interesting technologies such as React, React Native, Cloud services (AWS), GraphQL, Figma and also became more conscious about building high-performance, maintainable, scalable, accessible and modern web and mobile applications. As a bad guy ;)

### Money
Close friends know that I love money (I mean, who doesn't?) and this year I made a lot of it and all I can say is Money is good.

My self-esteem has broken the charts, I feel 10x more confident than I was in 2019, my net-worth increased by over 100%. I'm a much more happier person and even when i'm down or sad its never because of lack of money because these days I spend to cure any pain i'm experiencing. I can now afford things I desire to have without (too much) tears, this year i changed all my gadgets to some of the best out there and i hope to do this again next year, I'm now a blessing to myself, family and anyone that comes to my presence. 

### Investments
Earlier this year, sometime in the month of May when i saw that i had over half a million in my possession i decided to try crypto trading so I enrolled in a crypto trading school, bought some satoshi and decided to trade in my spare time but unfortunately i couldn't cope with the trading school because I got very busy with my contract job.

After my crypto trading experience i decided not to go into such a venture till i'm very sure about my time schedule.

Presently i enrolled in a 2 months Product Design course.

I was also awarded with some shares from the company i work for in San Franciso, documents signed and sealed!

### Relationships 
I've been far away from my friends and it's been painful but i guess that's the price i had to pay for jumping into the adult lifestyle so early because most of my friends can't relate to things i'm experiencing in life right now so it's hard to maintain a long conversation with most of them.

I made a lot of friends at work though, really awesome people!

Girlfriend?, omo. Still haven't found who's worth my time, love, money and full commitment because i'm a spec and a spec needs a spec but specs are hard to find so we keep searching (no settling down for low quality).

Family?, I built a solid relationship with my parents and siblings. I hide nothing from my parents, they know how much i earn, my situationships, my scuffles and everything else.

### COVID19
Myself, my family, friends, colleagues, and everyone around me didn't contract it. Thank God!

### Talks and Tecnical writing
This year i wasn't too active in the community, i wrote only one technical article and gave one talk which was at the Facebook Build Day. Next year will be much better!

### Wins
* I contributed to open source
* I got my first dollar paying contract
* I got an Internship with a startup based in San Francisco
* I helped ship a brilliant fintech product (It's the next big thing, watch out!)
* New Gadgets, i changed all
* I got a full time job
* I gave a lot in 2020 and i felt great doing it. I pray for more blessing to be a blessing to people.
* Net-worth increased by 100%
* I supported my family morally and financially
* I turned 21 and i didn't die this year

### Notable Losses
* I lost my grandma (80 years)
* I couldn't participate in GSoC (Google student Internship)
* I didn't learn crypto trading after paying $200 for the training, it was all my fault.
* My application to Microsoft was rejected. no reasons given
* My application to Goldman Sachs was rejected. no reasons given.

### Gratitude
I'm full of thanks. 2020 has been awesome, My wins overshadowed my losses. I'm looking forward to what 2021 has in store for me, the possibilities are endless, its gonna be a really big year, more growth, more money and more records to be broken. Right now my only goal for 2021 is to do 10x better than I did in 2020.

Thanks for reading, please like and share!, Happy new year in Advance!!