Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Sarah. She had always dreamed of becoming a successful businesswoman, but she knew it would take more than just hard work and determination to make her dream a reality. She would have to move mountains to get what she wanted. Sarah grew up in a small town where opportunities were few and far between. Her family didn't have the means to support her education or her career aspirations, so she had to figure out a way to make it on her own. She worked tirelessly at her part-time job, saving every penny she could, and studying business in her spare time. Despite her hard work and dedication, Sarah faced many obstacles on her journey. She was constantly told that she couldn't do it, that she wasn't smart enough or talented enough to make it in the business world. But Sarah refused to let anyone's negativity bring her down. The first mountain Sarah had to move was getting a college education. Her family couldn't afford to send her to college, and she didn't have the grades or test scores to qualify for scholarships. But Sarah was determined. She took out student loans, worked multiple jobs, and even took classes at night to make it happen. It was a grueling and difficult process, but Sarah finally graduated with a degree in business. Next, Sarah had to find a job in her field. She applied to countless companies, but was met with rejection after rejection. She was told that she was overqualified, underqualified, or just not the right fit. But Sarah didn't give up. She took on any job she could find, from waiting tables to working in retail, all the while networking and building connections in the business world. Finally, Sarah landed an entry-level position at a small marketing firm. She worked tirelessly, going above and beyond her job duties, and quickly moved up the ranks. But even with her success, Sarah still felt like she wasn't reaching her full potential. She knew she had bigger ideas and bigger plans, but she didn't know how to make them happen. That's when Sarah decided to start her own business. It was a daunting task, and many of her friends and family told her she was crazy for even considering it. But Sarah was determined. She spent every spare moment researching and planning, and finally, she had a solid business plan in place. The next mountain Sarah had to move was finding funding for her business. She applied for loans, but was denied again and again. Banks and investors didn't believe in her idea or her ability to run a successful business. But Sarah didn't let that stop her. She reached out to her network, and eventually, she found a group of investors who believed in her vision. With funding secured, Sarah was finally able to launch her business. It wasn't easy, and there were many times when she wanted to give up. But Sarah's determination and hard work paid off. Her business was a success, and it quickly grew into a thriving company. Years went by and Sarah's company had become one of the most successful in the industry. She had finally accomplished her dream and had moved all the mountains that stood in her way. But Sarah didn't rest on her laurels. She knew that there were always more mountains to move, and she was ready for whatever challenges came her way. Sarah's story is an inspiration to many, proving that with hard work, determination and a never give up attitude, anyone can move mountains and achieve their dreams.

WHEN LIFE HITS YOU SO HARD! They said time flies so fast when you are happy, but that's not always true. Time flies so freaking fast too when you have loads of work to be done! I have planned to working on my thesis at least 1-hour per day but these couple weeks passed I was so busy that it has been 15 days since my last writing. Life definitely hits me so hard i can barely breath. #Stressful becomes my best friend.😑 Remember when is the last time you were laughing your ass off? I mean I could still laugh with jokes but deep inside my thoughts, there's still plenty of stressful hiding under my brain. All I'm thinking about is work work work work and work. And whenever I have some time off, I just wanna heading to my bed. Forget about shopping, watching a movie or even hang out with friends, I don't have time for those pieces of stuff anymore. If I did, I would dedicate it to be my bedtime. #No time for having fun I have an interesting conversation with friends, we were sitting at the coffee talking about guys and kinds of stuff. And then there's a question asking us who were single that ‘have you seen anyone lately?' and the answer goes to ‘we don't even have enough time to sleep, you can surely forget about finding a boyfriend.' That's right, not anymore. We don't have a boyfriend because we still haven't found the one yet but we were so busy with school and work that relationship lately becomes the second priority of life. And for those my friends who're in a relationship, they find it so hard to schedule the time to hanging out with their guys. But I do like my life this way. Nobody's going to distract me from focusing on my career as a student and a jobber. School and career first, relationship later! #I tend to shut people out. I used to keep my smartphone in my pocket for an hour because I want to concentrate on doing my paper until I realized what if someone tries to contact or call me or if they had an emergency situation and they need my help. But guess what, no one sends me a message if it isn't about work or assignment. Sometimes I hope at the end of the day, I had someone who will text me asking how my day was? But I never care about them so why the hell do they care about me too. I find it so hard to keep in touch with people in my life. I mean I don't know how to make a conversation. It sounds so selfish I know but I do have lots of things to do which is more important than keeping in touch with the person I barely know. Also, I think if I really mean something to them, they will find a way to talk to me. This is probably a life lesson everyone needs to learn. If yours isn't tough like mine, congratulations you still have time to having fun. For me, I didn't prepare myself for this, I never thought my life would be so hard since only the third year of university. But life lesson isn't for you to give up, but for you to stand tall and embrace every obstacle of it.

I don't know what it was. But it just happened, all at once and there I was crying an ocean of tears in front of bare walls. I had a lot of hatred for those people, a lot of agonies. Anger was not because they rejected me, but for the fact that they crushed my confidence, they questioned my judgments and revolted against my principles of life. They made me feel worthless and who cannot do good work for the industry. But deep inside I still knew that I was a born leader and an excellent coder indeed. That night I couldn't sleep. I just wondered if what I was doing in my life was worth it? I was chasing a dream that wasn't mine. I was restless not because I was thrown out but because I was trying to become a person that I portrayed to others, not the one I actually was. I was doing stuff just for the sake of doing it. I wanted to quit. But there was a fear deep inside that I had come so far and I couldn't start all over again. Questions like 'What if I failed?', 'What if I regretted my decision?' started pinching me. Soon I figured out that these were all related to the question 'What people would think of me if I failed?'. Because if I was alone and I failed I wouldn't mind failing. I slept... The morning was another day of life. I had to force myself out of the bed as usual with the hope that today, maybe, I will like the work I do. Days passed by... One fine day, I just came across a quote "Failure defeats losers but it inspires winners". That changed my view all of a sudden. One rejection cannot lead me down. I don't want to be a loser. I was NEVER a loser. So I made up my mind to start doing something. So I started listing my goals, the one that directly gives me pleasure. I had a detailed chart of all my personal, professional and health goals jotted on a paper. I always like to jot things for reference. I pasted it on a wall in front of me. The list was huge but it contained all things that give me pleasure so it wouldn't be troublesome to follow it. I started going to the gym, coded regularly, paid full attention to the courses I was doing. And over a period of 1 month, I regained my confidence and I was all fired up to do big and go after my goal passionately. I rediscovered the real me... Sometimes you lose your real self to impress people who are not worth sacrificing for. Never compromise on "THE REAL YOU". So this was my journey of rediscovering myself after 1 rejection which probably was the best that happened in my life. Rejections are a path for selections. Cheers !!

RHYTHM OF ANCIENT SONGS AND BEAT OF AFRICAN PRAISE POETRY My birth is a metaphor of bullet-traces and the ironic verse of Leninist style-songs for black liberation that reverberated the grey-mist clad red-mountains of home – Zimbabwe. My birthing was a stitch between the thud of war-time guns and a heave of pungwe jives. Young women of my mother's age were volunteer maids during the traumatic but zeal-oiled Chimurenga times, cooking and washing for the cadres of liberation. Chimurenga songs sung by these war-ironed peasant mothers and bullet-toughened collaborators in the red-hills of Wedza. These Mother-guerrillas endured the hard throbs of grenades and the thrash of midnight-rains in those village hills alongside bushy male combatants. They learnt the soprano of the gun and the tenor of death.These were heaven-echoing struggle hymns. On the day of my birth, heavy rains rattled the winter-crusted red-earth. Rivers sobbed with heaven's tears and sorrows of war. That grueling night, swarms of collaborators were moved from one base to another, my earthly goddess was among those pilgrims of war. …her heartbeat thrilled my tender ears and her blood-ripples lulled my faint soul to sleep. And somy foetus spirit rode along with waves of echo and beat of verse. Ingenuity. I am the blessing of the trip, the child of war song and rain. A mystery. I am a child of song. I was birthed during the exodus. That rebel's war was characterized by death, wailing, stampede, bravery, shallow-graves, song and continuous walking. A trailblazing Africa reality show. My earthly goddess was a dedicated collaborator, volunteer and songstress. She carried freedom in the sacred cave of her womb. After their strange overnight long walk to freedom base of Mbirashava – rains ceased fire, war-drums paused and their echoes got trapped into the blankets of early day mist. Then came my birth cry they say like an exclamation engraved on the yellow-disc of the smoke-bruised African sun. Claws of dawn caressed the sorrow-soaked red-hills. My goddess wriggled in a thick volcano of red-clay mud, ochre-red blood and dead grass. Her womb groaned from labor pangs and suddenly the wind was cold. June dared the earth and everything in it. Cold-winds whined ferociously to disobedient flora and delinquent vultures. Winter, fast clicking a pause button to the jungle's daily festivals. I was born. Cadres and collaborators dribbled a liberation jive for my homecoming. They called me Gandanga. I was initiated into this earth by the alto of howling winter-winds, baritones of barking-baboons and the ease soprano of hooting-owls. A child of song. I was introduced to the festival of sounds, loud and low, good and bad, discordant and beautiful. Upon arriving at the village homestead, the earth trembled, the air got electric with ululations. My paternal grandmother fervently recited a traditional totemic praise poem. “Chirasha, Chikandamina, Weshanu uri pauta, Mavsingo a Govere, Vari Zimuto, Mukwasha waMambo, Vakafura bwe rikabuda ropa” A lone drum thrilled them into the audience into another dancing routine. The echo of the tinkling drum resonated with the beat of my grandmother's recitations. They said that my eyes winked in response to their merriment. Even up to this day, I beat my chest with pride to that ceremonial reception performed by an elder qualified to be my ancestor. My old singer-grandmother usually bundled me behind her old but steely back. Lullabies caressed me into dreamland until my goddess returned from her daily errands. I was raised by extraordinary songs, sweet and mellow to every infant's senses. I enjoyed the ear-tickling ancient poetry. They say I slept to the rhythm of that beautiful lullaby. My grandmother was Gogo in African – she would fall asleep too. Mother returned from the red-clay fields to find us under the watch of spirits and snores. After some weeks my umbilical cord wilted and fell. They buried it under the hearth near the main fireplace. Thus how we are bonded by our departed clan spirits. And so I grew up in a highly strict African traditional clan. My father and fellow clansmen brewed ceremonial beer for traditional rites. They supplicated to ancestral gods to end life-tormenting ailments, ravaging hunger, abject poverty and bad omen. Their usual incarnations, totemic praise's performances cultivated the griot in me. Praise and protest poetry became my official language. After my umbilical cord rites, my father gave me a name. He named me after the most powerful battalion of Tshaka Zulu, a battalion that never lost even a single battle – Imbizo.

I graduated high school back in 2011, and have been attending community college ever since. At the time I was not interested in continuing with school but my older sister forced me to enroll because education was and is the only tool that many of us have. The only tool to work our way out of being poor for the rest of our lives. I attended classes but I had no direction, no passion, but I still tried anyway, I changed my major several times and for a while it seemed like maybe I could make a career out of being an American Sign Language interpreter because it didn't seem too bad, but after four semesters of that I knew I couldn't continue studying something I didn't have a passion for. I made a D in ASL 4, and thought maybe school wasn't for me, so I decided not to return. That only lasted a semester because I fell into a deep depression and my family made it their business to make me go back to school. So when I began to look at what classes I could take, I noticed that I had taken many of the core classes along with some developmental classes that I didn't need to take, and had avoided the upper sciences and math. At a quick glance, what seemed to be the “easiest” class to me was Stellar Astronomy, and that was the only class I took in Spring 2016. That one class changed everything for me. All my insecurities and complaints that I had about every little thing became superficial after taking that class. Out there - time and space become one, there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, dark matter etc. it all fascinated me, caught my attention. Earth, the only known planetary body to harbor life and we are a part of that, a part of the Universe. Suddenly I didn't hate school anymore and even though I originally wanted to become an astronomer because of that course, I knew the only career options for me were to either work for NASA or work at a planetarium which both seemed extremely unlikely because of limited opportunities and the competition. Through my searching I chose environmental sciences as an alternative, which seemed general enough because I began to appreciate every subject. My next step was to take more science and math, which I did and it was not easy. Spring 2017 I took Trigonometry and once again I made another D. That was personally crushing for me as well as for my gpa. I thought life was supposed to become easier when you found your passion but instead I left that class defeated. As a result, six weeks of my Summer I spent retaking Trig and made a B. In the Fall I took a Biology and a Geology course. I believe that it was somewhere around this time that I stopped receiving financial aid because for one I had become an independent student and two I had exceeded the time-frame given to students to complete their degree. I now had to pay tuition myself with the help of my family. My gpa wasn't the best, I had no achievements, no honors, no extracurriculars, so even though I had help with money I felt like I squandered so much of my time in school and I had no achievements. I had an idea of what I wanted to study but I began to wonder if it was too late for me. Everyday I felt an enormous amount of pressure from my family to finish school because I kept not graduating, and everyone thought I'd change my major again, and I needed to stop wasting my time so I could begin working to make big money. I was told to go back and finish my ASL interpreter training because I was halfway done with that degree. My family's worries were and are completely understandable but I did not want to settle because that's what so many people around me did and many of them are miserable. That one semester I took off was enough to keep me going - I never wanted to feel that way again. Spring 2018 I decided to go back to math and take Precal, and once again my life changed. The professor told the class about an opportunity called NCAS which was an acronym for “NASA Community College Aerospace Scholars” and I couldn't believe what I heard. Almost immediately I applied early and spent several agonizing weeks waiting to hear back. When I did hear back via email, I was accepted into the program! There was no way I was going to squander this opportunity. The online program lasted 5 weeks and was actually a competition with about 400 students from across the US who participated. Students who did well were going to be given a four day onsite visit for FREE as long as we earned a B to be considered. I made a 100% and after some paperwork I visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. NCAS Summer Class of 2018. One year later and I am currently participating in NASA's Lucy Student Pipeline Accelerator & Competency Enabler or L'SPACE for short. I don't worry about my future as much anymore. I tried, failed many times, kept going and had to learn to become relentless with my goals and aspirations. I can't wait to see what my future holds. Just a little bit longer. But how much longer?