It feels great to be here and share my life as it unfolds. I know this will be a great experience because I will be able to express my thoughts and feelings, something I’ve struggled with for as long as I’ve been alive. Let’s get into it. My name is Mariam Suleman, 21 years old.For the most part of my life, I’ve had 4 siblings but recently found out I have 3 more. But that is not news considering where I come from. I was born and raised in Wa, Upper West Region of Ghana. I have 2 elder brothers, an elder sister and a younger sister from my mom’s side.
Education
What I can remember about growing up is just about being in school, I sometimes feel I’ve missed a few chapters of my life cause how come I don’t remember much.
I was and still am a very reserved person. Just go to school and get good grades. That’s all it was about and that’s all I did. Didn’t make much friends cause I felt I never fit in. I was only good at one thing: being a good student so I might as well just focus on that. That’s the only thing that gave me confidence.
In my last year of basic school, I was appointed to be a compound prefect( A prefect in charge of ensuring a particular part of the school compound is always kept clean). I think that pushed me out a little cause I had to interact with my juniors to get the place cleaned. Junior high was basically the same thing, just getting the grades.
My dad was a medical doctor by profession ( past tense because he left us two years ago). I grew up around him so I picked up the idea that I wanted to be a medical doctor in future. So I knew I wanted to study General science in senior high as a step towards my dream. I actually did study general science and I also got the opportunity to be a Laboratory girls prefect ( a prefect tasked with keeping the science laboratories clean and preparing the labs for practical sessions).
It was actually in senior high I realized I wasn’t so into being a medical doctor as I thought I was. Mathematics has always being my favorite and I wanted to learn something that was in line with it. I was also intrigued by the idea of creating applications and being able to tell the computer what to do. That’s what brought me to the decision of choosing to study computer science in the university. So currently, I am pursuing a 4 year bachelor of science degree in Computer science at the University of Development Studies- Navrango campus which has be changed to CKT-UTAS. I am currently in my third year and I can’t wait for 2023 to be out of there already.
I currently hold the position of the Women’s commissioner (Wocom) of the computer science society
Interests
Being a very reserved person, all my time went into reading books. Story books specifically and that was a plus to me because it helped a lot with my English Language. That’s another subject I found so easy when others didn’t.
Playing video games was also something. If someone told me there would be a time in my life I wouldn’t even think about video games, I wouldn’t believe it. I was around my brothers a lot so I picked up those things from them. Crazy taxi, GTA Vice city, Alien shooter and others that I can’t remember now. And oh, I could watch movies all day long.
I dropped all these when I went to senior high and all my focus was just on making it to vacation.
I didn’t really pick up much interests from the senior high school.
When I got into the university, straight away I got introduced to a friend who guided me to start coding. He is a web developer so naturally that’s what he was taking me through. I started with HTML, CSS, and PHP.
The friend that helped me to start my coding journey
Then the Covid lockdown came in 2020.
I tried to continue watching my coding tutorials but I was starting to care less. Another friend got me a course in Digital marketing and I was able to finish it in 2 weeks. He then linked me up with an organization to be a digital marketer. I was thrilled cause I felt I was finally doing something with my life. Being home for so long, all I could think about was doing things to generate money. My sister had just started a cosmetic business and she gave me some of the products to sell and make some money for my self. Not having school to worry about, I put my all into it and I was doing really well.
Helping at my sister’s store during vacations
School resumed and it got hard for me to balance the two cause I had so many other things to do. It was later that year(2021) I got introduced to machine learning and data science. I found it so interesting. Which made me realize I didn’t know so much about the different aspects of the course I’m studying. I read about the others but I just knew data science is the one for me. So I started my data science journey and I’ve been on it till today. Hopefully, I get to reach my target goal by the end of this year.
I hope to learn and re-learn as much as I can in this community and make friends with the same interests as me.
A special thanks goes to my “ride or die” @zzzinnn for introducing me to this platform