Anifa, a beneficiary of the TIES Kenya University Scholarships program, recently wrote a blog article* describing a typical day for her at Meru University:
< A Day in the Life of a 3rd Year CS Student />
01. The Morning: Deep Dives
My morning usually starts with one of my most challenging units: System Programming. Third year is where the training wheels come off. We aren’t just writing code anymore; we are learning how software talks to the hardware.
Between lectures, you’ll find me in the lab or a quiet corner of the library. Currently, I’m obsessed with AI and Machine Learning. I’ve been working on a project—a Student Academic Performance Analysis System—designed to help our deans spot trends and support students better.
02. The Mid-Day Hustle
Lunch is usually a quick affair, often spent discussing “The Africa’s Talking” hackathons or the latest tech meetups in Nairobi. Being a TIES scholar is about the mindset of excellence.
Currently, my “free” time is dedicated to:
- The Attachment Hunt: Polishing my C# and Python skills, aiming for real-world software engineering roles.
- “Laptops for All”: I recently developed a web-based code editor with a local AI assistant (using Ollama) to help classmates who don’t have high-end machines.
03. The UHRS Grind & Reflection
By 4:00 PM, the academic day winds down, but the learning doesn’t stop. I’ve recently started exploring UHRS tasks via Clickworker. It’s tedious work, but seeing the “behind-the-scenes” of AI training is fascinating.
As the sun sets over the campus, I head back to my desk. I might spend an hour or two debugging a WhatsApp widget I’m building.
Before I close my laptop, I always think about the “TIES” that bind my dreams to reality. Without this sponsorship, the transition from a student interested in tech to a developer building systems for the future would have been much harder.
At TIES, we are extremely proud of our Kenya University Scholarship beneficiaries like Anifa. It is a real pleasure seeing these young women develop and grow when they may not have had the opportunity do do so without their TIES scholarship.
*This post is an edited version of a blog entry that originally appeared on tieskenya.co.ke