My Academic Journey: A Reflection on Challenges and Triumphs
To reflect on my academic journey, in this essay I will elaborate on how I persevered through financial and social drawbacks while pursuing a bachelor's degree in electronics and telecommunications. Although I struggled with the field due to my background in applied science in high school, my burning passion and commitment to gaining hands-on experience helped me overcome these challenges. I will share how this journey has helped me discover my passion for technology and how I have been able to apply my knowledge and experience in this field. By sharing my story, I hope to inspire others to pursue their passions and overcome obstacles in their own academic journeys.
Fortunately, in the second semester, with colleagues, I started a small study group for the purposes of mutually uplifting one another. We shared knowledge based on our high school background. Some had a background in theoretical science, and others had training from technical schools. We all wanted to build a conducive environment that allowed us to help each other gain a clearer understanding of our field. Within the same year, when other classmates wanted to join, we generated a new idea of expanding our initiative to create a much bigger and more inclusive platform that enabled students in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering to combine their skills, to think out of the box, and to generate a variety of creative ideas that will get them used to building an electronic project. It’s in this team that I got to meet like-minded people with whom I worked to create an electronic attendance system, and this opened my mind to more learning opportunities and discoveries until I got selected to participate in a training program called “WeCode” sponsored by GIZ, the ICT Chamber, and many other stakeholders.
This has been a great kick-start on an incredible journey that I strongly believe will not only turn me into the woman my mother would love me to be, but also the woman of my own dreams, a woman that will give the best of me to transform Rwanda and Africa into a digital economy and sustainably developed community. This association boosted my learning abilities in research and project management. I still remember the first time that my team and I were brainstorming ideas on the electronic attendance system project. We wanted to do an attendance system, which includes an attendance device that leveraged fingerprint technology and Microsoft Excel to fetch a monthly record of attendance. We wanted to make a device for our university that could help get rid of the paper jam used in our traditional attendance recording and ease the task of analyzing the semester record of the attendance. We ideally planned to make this device portable, which means it had to have a battery and would work online and offline.
After long nights and intensive working days, our own attendance device saw the light. My passion for electronics and telecommunications upgraded my open-minded self and made me more eager to learn and dig into more and more electronic concepts. From this deep dive and consistent learning, I started working on another project that will potentially turn into a life-changing solution for thousands and thousands of families in Rwanda. This is an ongoing project of an electronic energy meter. It is about a division of cash power within rented buildings by different tenants who still share one cash power account.
This project will come as a pro-active solution to avoid dispute among tenants using the same cash power because people will have control over the electricity they use and they hence won’t have to share bills of electricity they don’t consume. In the course of working on those projects, I came to know FABLAB which provided an incredible support to our project implementation, and that’s when I explored more about the upcoming technology In RWANDA (machine learning, IOT, and AI). Many of the seminars that were held in FABLAB were introducing machine learning IOT, and AI and how they are a big evolution in the world. But what captured my interest most was the concept of machine learning. I was amazed by the fact that I could teach a machine to sort like human beings, to deal with and manage data on a regular basis. I am willing to grab any opportunity to learn about machine learning, an opportunity that would help me become the woman I aspire to be, the woman that will give the best of herself to turn Rwanda and Africa into digital economies.
In my research, I came across Carnegie Mellon, Africa. I yearn for a world-class education and being part of a community of people who stand on the front-line to lead the change that we need, a community that believes in people and in me to create a knowledge-based economy, I realized that is what CMU Africa is all about. I strongly believe that my passion, hard work are and a growing mindset are great assets, but I also recognize that they will only give me half the results I seek, if I don’t have an excellent education. I love the maximum, I look towards topping up, and I believe in the power of empowering communities to be their greatest on their journey towards success. I look up to Carnegie Mellon as my door to the resources that will unleash my full potential and equip me with the package of competencies and skills I need to make the most significant impact in my community, in Rwanda, and in Africa.
