It's another day... The life of student performing higher education is a tough one. I never knew my life would be so full of surprises like this year alone.
Let me introduce myself. I'm Jacques André Labuschagne. At a young stage in my life, 3, I was fascinated with computers. Even though South Africa was a little behind with technology in the early 90's I kept track of it throughout my life.
My dad brought home once a old DOS computer, it had the casing flat on the table which had a floppy drive which you had you push in and close with a switch. The monitor was multi colour filter. You could have chosen between green, yellow, orange, black-and-white and I think red.
It was a world I couldn't have understand at the time what really happens inside a computer. I always wondered how the images and text came to be on the screen. The games that we had was really interactive with the standard keyboard. The mouse we didn't use because we didn't had any software at the time for using it.
Chess and Ally Cat was my favourite games to play, one can say but how would I know to push in a floppy and type the right DOS commands so that the game appears? Well I was very attentive towards what my parents was doing on the computer.
I really like the computers, but one day the computer didn't want to work anymore for a reason I don't know why...
My dad wasn't very pleased to see that the computer was now a piece of junk in his study at home. He even thought that perhaps my brother or I had something to do with it. It couldn't have been us because at that time we knew that if we did something to upset my father, it be seen as way to get punished with the belt or the "rottang". It was an expensive piece of equipment.
So now that we didn't a computer I had to face the ones at school. Although they were the same type of computers, I really loved these ones. They had some type of word processor installed on them not the mention the Alice and Wonderland game which everybody wanted to play. I remembered there was two computers installed with MS Windows 95 on them. They had a pirate game on and if you were good behaved in class you would get your chance playing the game. I didn't really wanted to play the game. The school teacher gave computer literacy after school too. I went to those classes. I was so impressed with myself that at an age of 4 and 5 I could create greeting cards.
When I became 5 I was sent to preprimary school, today know as grade R or 0 or something like that. The PCs at that time at school was replaced with computers that had Windows 95 on them which got upgraded Windows 98 the year after. When I reached the age of 12 I was in grade 3, which we had formal computer literacy classes. The school introduced that we start off using paint and after that MS Office 98.
Now we could create documents and presentations. It was awesome!! In grade 4 we were advised to take a exam of this. So I was one of the few that did and remarkably I passed with flying-colours he-he-he. Until grade 7 we were able to use MS Word, MS PowerPoint and MS Excel.
Between the grades of 4 and 7 my dad bought a Pentium 4 computer with Windows Millennium on it. My brother and I could now experience Windows Type games. So the first games we conquered was the the Command and Conquer series from the ones first created until the last one. Best games ever developed in history I say.
I felt good that I could see my future heading off to an exciting one. When I reached Framesby High School, I wondered what would be in store for me. Then we saw we didn't get use a computer, "What a bunch of crap this is!" I thought. That was in 2004. The higher grades were allowed to be teached in Computer Literacy and Computer Programming...
We as grade 8's were only introduced how the computer boots up and that was just about it. I can't really remember what the other stuff was because at that time we were stuck with 12 or 13 subjects that I really hated we had so much class work and homework to do. My bag I used to carry, suffered the most, that thing's straps were breaking because of the many books I should have in my possession.
Then in grade 9 we had typing classes. Okay close to computers but here is the surprise... It was normal typewriters, not computers... typewriters. Yah so if you made a mistake on your paper you couldn't remove it. It was tough because we were disciplined to type out a whole different alphabet orders. If you were caught watching your fingers you were forced to type out more.
In that same year we had to make choices for the next year's subjects we had to do. I really like having isiXhosa as a subject, and at the time I was really good at it. But I had my dream. So I left Xhosa for Computer Application Technology and Information Technology.
At the end of high school I made a distinction on my national certificate for graduating at the school. Everybody used to call me the IT-guy, even at the Mr and Ms Framesby pageant of 2008 I was renowned for my IT-position at school. How embarrassing LOL.
I left school with a popular status and everybody knew me at the time. I was so focused on passing all my subjects that I totally forgot about applying at the university... So I was forced to work in my gap year as a cashier at a supermarket.
I had fun times in 2009. Was the year I started to see my true colours and see that I was becoming a rebel. Had the weird hairstyles and makeup on and went to night clubs. "Yoh", I say now to myself looking back at those times. I even made some new friends that seem to be very cool to have.
The same year I applied for university and I was accepted to write and type of exam that would test my skills for higher education. I passed and I was excepted doing my National Diploma in Information Technology Software Development.
How excited I was to start as a student at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. It was a whole new world starting in 2010, the campus atmosphere and classes we attended was very insightful. I managed to even take end-user module for doing MS Office 2007. It was awesome... We had a lot of deadlines each week. Mid-year I made two friends that I will never forget.
The second year when I became a senior, We had fewer subjects to concentrate on. My two varsity friends was awesome. We could share our work and gain insight more about the modules we have be taught in. Beside the work we had fun times. We always seem to laugh at each other when we have conversation or just doing the odd stupid stuff by accident... LOL
The 3rd year we decided to work together to do our diploma final year project. I also took a break of the club life and all the weird styles I had. We manage to create a system that was well recognized and unique to have what we got a distinction for it. I can't elaborate more about it because the three of us took the project and turned it into a business perspective. What I can say is that the progress of that project has grown a lot and this year alone we got a lot done with it.
We all three managed to get our diplomas. Awesome!! We took it as a sign of that our friendship was the reason for it. The JST Solutions, group name, was well know throughout the department (School of ICT) where we studied. Two of us remains to this year on campus because we decided to do our Btech Degree in IT Software Development. One decided to see what the IT industry looks like and became a junior programmer. Nasty work... I tell you.
This year, 2013, doing a Btech degree is not for sissies. I'll be honest with you if you fail a module, you shouldn't feel bad about it. A lot of students don't make it and have to take the modules over the next year.
We all got this year a research project. This projects is done alone not in groups like we did in 3rd year. I'm excited about my project, but starting to become afraid of the scheduled time completing this thing due to other modules and exams I have to concentrate on.
Well that is it in a nutshell. I will continue typing more if I manage to find free time again.
