Student Profiles – Malaz

“I was told that everyone would graduate and have the same degree, but what differentiates me from others is my experiences. Thus, I followed my passion for learning new things about computers. I spent my free time learning about useful applications or exploring Excel’s awesome functionalities until one day, I registered for a programming course. Through this course, I learned the fundamentals of computer science and focused on Python 3. Although this course does not make its students experts, it opened my eyes to the huge world of programming and how amazing my journey could be in this world. After all, the first project that I worked on was “Hello World!” 

When I finished the course, I honed my Python skills by taking online courses, watching YouTube videos, and solving challenges on some websites. Then I started some projects, 2D games, and some applications, and I created them all on my own! Then, I decided to move on to web development. I learned about MySQL, PHP, and JavaScript from online courses. But, before I went deep into these programming languages, the MIT Refugee Action Hub (MIT ReACT) posted their call for applications to study Data Science. The acceptance rate is 7%, but I decided to apply anyway. My application stood out because of my experiences, which is what they said in the email, congratulating me that I had passed the first step. I did a proctored exam that was 2.5 hours. It was hard, but I passed it, and now I am a student at MIT! At the same time, I enrolled in a full-stack web development boot camp to further improve my programming skills. There is still a lot of time before graduation; who knows what else I will learn!”

To read other stories from the 2020 CLCC Yearbook, click here