Aspiring Plastic Surgeon to Software Engineer: Interview w/ Ojima Abraham

When Iroko was still an idea in my head, I always had the desire to share the stories of other college students like myself, who all have a story to share with the world. It was such a great, fun time talking with Ojima Abraham, a junior at Franklin & Marshall College, who shared his story of how he taught himself how to code and left his path of wanting to become a plastic surgeon to become the software engineer he is today. In this interview, you'll hear a lot about Ojima's upbringing as a coder in Nigeria, his countless application experiences, and his advice to prospective coders who are afraid to just get out there and act.

G. Guity: Thank you for taking out the time to talk with me, Ojima. Before we dive right in, I have a small, fun challenge. Can you describe yourself to me without using the words "tech", "coding", "software", and "engineer"?

O. Abraham: Okay… Describe myself. My name is Ojima, and I’m a junior at Franklin & Marshall College. I am from Nigeria, so I’m an international student from Nigeria. I attended Government Secondary School in Karu, Abuja. And I used to be part of a circus. So yeah, I guess that’s about me.

G. Guity: A circus! What was your special act? And how hard was that challenge for you?

O. Abraham: Just a juggler. And I don't know. It wasn't hard but doesn't talk about much of what I do these days.

G. Guity: Let's go back to when you were applying for college. What made you decide on F&M becoming your new home?

O. Abraham: My Education USA advisors met with an F&M international advisor, and that was how I first got in contact with Franklin & Marshall. I had already applied to F&M by then, but yeah, I applied to F&M and I got in, and I thought it would be a great place to go.

G. Guity: And what was your average day at F&M like? How has it changed since you were a freshman?

O. Abraham: I don’t know if I have an average day? Every day at F&M is different, honestly. So it's hard, really hard for me to sum up my day and take like an “average”. I would say the thing that is common among my days at F&M is homework. Having lots of homework, having lots of reading to do. I think that's like pretty common among my classes and my days here at F&M. But apart from that, I don't think there's anything that is shared across the different days except like, having to do a lot of readings, having to go to class, for the most part, and also having to do homework.

Um, so my average freshman year used to be me going to class, doing homework, playing rugby, and also applying for lots of internships and getting rejected. So that was like my freshman year mainly. And then sophomore year was more… going to class during homework, playing rugby, and having lots of interviews. Not the first half though, the first half was having lots of rejections. And then I started having interviews, so my average day became different in the sense that I started preparing for coding interviews.

I started studying way harder for interviews, LeetCode and YouTube being my best friends at the time. So yeah, I would say that's what changed. And now my junior year, an average day is class, homework. Me writing lots of code. And especially this spring semester, I just started an internship that has really changed the dynamics of my average day. So, now I write technical documentation for projects, plan out projects and go through like coding materials. I mostly try to learn different things outside class learning.

I'm doing a lot of self-learning right now. So that's something that has changed since my freshman year.

G. Guity: Can you tell me more about your current internship?

O. Abraham: I work at a startup called BidVersity. It’s an early-stage startup, so that’s very, very exciting for me. And their business model was basically helping small and minority-owned businesses mean government contracts.

G. Guity: That sounds amazing! Congratulations on such an incredible opportunity. How old were you when you first learned about coding?

O. Abraham: I knew about coding when I was in 12th Grade. SS3 Secondary School because… well, in the British system, it’s called secondary school. In the U.S. System, it’s called High School. So I was in my final year of secondary school and I had this friend who used to basically flex his knowledge of HTML and CSS and stuff like that. And I had another friend, Al-Amin, who actually tried to help me. He gave me PDFs, and he was like, “Yeah, just read this PDF, so you can start getting exposed to coding.” And I thought was cool. So I started reading those PDFs. I started teaching myself through those PDFs, and I was practicing how to code with my phone. So yeah, it was kind of cool. So, short answer, I was 17 when I first learned about coding.

G. Guity: You started your coding journey with just your phone? Wow. How did you do that?

O. Abraham: Yeah. There are many people who do that, honestly. When there’s a will, there’s a way, right? I used SoloLearn on my phone back then because I just wanted to start coding. I don’t think it’s anything big.

G. Guity: Trust me, that is definitely no small feat. To you, and to other coders who do that, give yourself more credit! That's seriously amazing. What advice would you give your past self, with all the experience and knowledge you have now on CS and software engineering?

O. Abraham: I would say just take it one day at a time. I feel like back then, I was really just all over the place. There were some days when I was anxious about like, “Oh, I don't know this thing, or I don't know this technology. Oh, there's this new technology and I don't know it. And I have a lot to learn…” and all these things. Even though I still realize that I have a lot to learn at this point, I feel like I’ve slowed down, and I've gotten comfortable with just trying to figure stuff out as I go instead of being anxious about topics I don't know. So I would say… slow down and take things one day at a time and just trust the process.

G. Guity: Many people can feel intimidated by CS, and don’t know if it’s something they can learn. What advice do you have for them?

O. Abraham: Okay, so computer science is different from coding. Computer science, in general, is the study of the theory of algorithms and computation. So if you really enjoy math, if you enjoy doing lots of math, computer science is for you. In high school, I used to love math. I still love math. Still my favorite subject. So if you feel like you really, really enjoy math, especially math that has a lot to do with proofs, then you would really enjoy doing a computer science major.

Now, with coding or learning how to code, if you love to solve puzzles or if you love to figure stuff out, or you just like to solve problems in general, then you would love coding. Most of writing code is just trying to figure out how all these different building blocks of a programming language can be used to build something. So, for example, if you're trying to build a system that will keep track of people’s age. Then, if you think about “Oh, what do I need to build this like, oh, I need variables. I need functions. I need to add.” Just add, since people’s ages increase every year, right?

If you just think about it from that perspective, instead of thinking about coding straight up, it's gonna it's going to be less intimidating for you. One of the most effective ways for me personally has been trying to figure out the problems in plain English first. Try to figure it out in human language before trying to figure out what the code is going to be because solving the problem step by step is the hardest part. If you can figure that out, then usually look up syntax sometimes when you forget something. But taking things slowly and trying to explain things to yourself in English is usually one of the most effective ways to learn how to code. I really think that everyone should know how to code, at least some very basic syntax.

G. Guity: That's some great advice. I took a computer science course myself, intro to computer programming, where I learned Python. It was out of my ordinary, but the knowledge I gained was worthwhile. All coding journeys are different, but I’m curious about yours. What language did you start with, and what did you start to learn after?

O. Abraham: As I mentioned earlier, in my final year of secondary school, I had a friend who sent me PDFs to read, and that was the beginning of my journey because I started learning HTML. That was the first thing I ever learned. I don't like to call HTML a programming language but it is it's a markup language, more like what the web is built on. But I started learning HTML and CSS. And then I dabbled a little bit with JavaScript. But then I started playing with PHP with my cousin and we even ended up building an E-Commerce website, which was like, basically something that we got from a YouTube video. So we watched a Youtube video, recreated the project, but then decided to change the way the project was. And we used my aunt’s laptop because I didn’t have my own personal computer. That was really how I started coding. And then I started building free websites for people because I felt like the best way to learn was to start building projects. I even built a free website for my church and would talk to people telling them that I could make a free website for them. And that way I was solidifying my knowledge of these different concepts.

And then my mom bought me a laptop, question mark, question mark? It was like, broken. But it was good. It was something at least. To put it into perspective, the laptop battery life was 20 minutes. And my neighborhood didn’t have reliable electricity. So yeah, I would code for 20 minutes every day, or on good days, I would code for two hours or three hours when there was electricity. When I had that laptop, though, that laptop actually changed my life. Because then I started building my own projects myself. I started learning Python when I got that laptop. And this was in early 2018. I built a cipher/ deciphering algorithm, or deciphering program. Basically, you give it a bunch of text and it uses Caesar cipher to like decipher or encrypt text. That was my introduction to Python. But Python still didn't make sense, kind of, but that was how I started learning Python.

And then, that year was when my coding journey actually took a big turn because that’s when I decided to start learning coding actively. Prior to that, even though I was doing projects, I was just learning coding passively. I would learn something one day and come back in two weeks to do something else. But then I realized that I actually wanted to learn this. I wasn’t in college, so I thought that this might be my way out of this kind of like. I grew up in the trenches, to put it nicely, so I thought that learning how to code would help me leave the life I was currently living and move to somewhere better. But I didn’t think of my coding journey as a way to make money. Because since I was already building websites for free, I didn’t think no one would pay someone to code. I didn’t know there were careers where you were paid to write programs. My thought process was more of like, building software that people would use and buy, similar to Microsoft Word or Excel or something along those lines. Or build an app and people would use it and I’ll put ads on my app.

I was more intentional about my coding after that. I started coding every day. I relearned HTML and built a website that had functionalities. Then I built another website with CSS, and added some JavaScript to the website, using PHP and MySQL for the backend. This was my first fully functional project. I went back to Python, learned how to build software with Python, and built a personal website. Also, with my half-alive website, I started learning Android development. So yeah. I taught myself HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, PHP, how to use SQL databases, and a little bit of Android development.

I joined the Education USA program in 2017, but was more active in 2018. So at the US Embassy, they had desktop computers. And since I didn’t have my own personal computer, I used the resources at Education USA. I would code on this site called Repl, and Repl saved me. These are my roots. I tried to build a lot of stuff. I tried to build a BMI calculator and tried to do simple projects like so to still be in touch with everything I’ve done before. I kept trying and pushing, and then I got to college in 2019. And decided to take CS.

Here’s the funny part. Even when I was coding two years ago, I still wanted to do medicine because I wanted to be a plastic surgeon. I used to read medical books like Richard Drake’s Gray’s Anatomy and read books on plastic surgery finding interest in reconstructive processes. But then I got to college, and just wanted to try a computer science class. And then I took CS I. It was about Python and really chill, and I liked it. So I decided to declare CS major because I knew I enjoyed coding more than I enjoyed biology. So I took CS classes in college and was able to get my first internship as a freshman. My coding journey has been rough, but also really nice and educational for me.

G. Guity: That was a really productive 2017-2018! I'm glad you decided to make the decision to spend the time learning more about coding and working on all of those projects. You've come a long way, and I'm sure your experiences can be helpful to many people who are interested in coding just how you are. For my next question, I would love to learn more about your internship history. Can you tell me about it?

O. Abraham: I decided I wanted to start doing internships my freshman year. So I started applying to places. I got a final round interview at Microsoft, for their New Technologies program. I thought it was awesome! But then I got rejected afterward and found myself applying for close to 200 applications. Some of them were pointless because I knew I would get rejected because I applied as a freshman and they were looking for juniors. Anyways, after close to 200 rejections, I got an offer from CK-12 Foundation, which is a small educational nonprofit based in Palo Alto, San Francisco. I contributed to real-world projects by building math applets, for students to play with on the website because CK-12 was based on open-source education. So my applets were integrated into educational articles and videos. It was great to see my work out there.

After that internship, I knew for a fact that I wanted to be a software engineer because I enjoyed building stuff for people to use. So I came back my sophomore year, applied to roles, and got lots of rejections again. I applied to fewer places this year, about 65. And ended up getting 15 offers. It was so different compared to my freshman year.

As I freshman, I was sick with FAANG fever. I wanted to work for the FAANG companies because I thought it was cool. It was the whole FAANG fever. Everyone had that? They still do. I don’t judge them for that, but when I was a freshman, it seemed like everyone had the mindset of “If you’re not working at a FAANG company, you’re not a great software engineer”. I wanted to be a great software engineer, so I let myself believe what they did. In my sophomore year, I got offers from two of the FAANG companies. But things were different now because I wanted to do real work. Contribute to large projects that would get produced and make an impact.

After thinking through my different offers, and talking to past interns at those companies, I picked MongoDB as the best option for me. At MongoDB did I make an impact? Yes. My internship experience was beyond my expectations. I was in a team of five people, three interns, and two full-time engineers. They were both our mentors and were the most amazing people I ever met. They were helpful, supportive, and taught us everything we needed to know. It was cool. It was awesome. I was working a lot on the front end of the project that we worked on, and now there are so many people using what I worked on. I’ll be heading to MongoDB again this summer, which is awesome.

G. Guity: I love that for you! I'm glad you enjoyed your time at MongoDB, and got a returning offer! Good luck with all of the amazing work you'll do in the future. And lastly, I just want you to share a project you’re really passionate about and why.

O. Abraham: I’m working on a school project with one of my friends, Amara Donzo. And we’re basically trying to figure out a way to help cleaners become independent. So, basically helping them break out of cleaning companies and get more value for their work and more compensation for their work. And we’re also trying to help people who need cleaning, get more affordable cleaning. But it’s part of my school. I’m also working with BidVersity, and I’m excited about what I’m going to build there to help streamline the process of government contracting for small and minority-owned businesses. Yeah. I’m really excited.

G. Guity: Exciting! I can't wait to see everything else you accomplish in this world, Ojima. It's so nice to get more insight from you on software engineering, and how passionate you are about impact. Best of luck to you, and thank you for sitting down with me to talk!

O. Abraham: Of course. It was so nice talking with you, Gyana.