Skip to main content

Student Story: A SUSE Scholarship in Cloud-Native Application Architecture

I was recently selected to compete in another Udacity scholarship challenge this time with SUSE to learn all about Cloud-Native microservices. As part of the challenge, we had to answer a few questions as part of the Student Story Program Yearbook. It's a requirement to be active in these community initiatives in order to be selected to proceed to phase 2 of the nanodegree program, so I gladly answered the questions below.


In one or two sentences give us a BRIEF introduction of yourself.

My name is Chromilo Amin and I'm from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I am a lifelong learner and believe that continuous training and re-training is the key to being relevant at your job in technology. I am disciplined enough having passed some certifications via self-study and have even loaded up on 15-credit semesters during University. I have taken many vendor certifications and many University or College degrees to further my career. There is an insatiable itch that comes with continuous learning and Udacity helps to relieve this itch with these challenges and scholarships so thank you. 


Who were you in the past? What obstacles or difficulties (big or small!) did you face, and how did that inform the person you are today? 

In the past, I was a struggling University of Hawaii at Manoa student left on my own to fend for myself immediately after high school. No kid should have to live on his own so far away from family at that point in life. I worked on-campus to make ends meet while living on-campus and needless to say, I did not enjoy the full university experience if you had to work and study at the same time. I completed my Bachelor's degree but instead of reuniting with my family, I went to work for a real estate company in Honolulu immediately after graduation in order to support myself. I was focused and determined to survive that I did not fully enjoy the tropical paradise which was Hawaii. I remember not even owning a UH of Manoa or a UH Rainbow Warriors t-shirt until I visited years later as a tourist. I have learned to fully appreciate that chapter of my life and now am applying that as I continue my Masters degree here in Canada while studying remotely at Georgia Tech. Stepping back to enjoy the learning opportunities at Georgia Tech and making sure family is front and centre is my lessons learned from my time in Hawaii.


What led you to the SUSE Cloud Native Foundations Scholarship Program? 

I was previously accepted into the Artificial Intelligence Program Manager nanodegree so I was aware of the many scholarship challenges offered by Udacity. My current job role as Enterprise IT Cloud Architect requires continuous education in all things cloud and this Cloud Native foundations challenge was perfect as it directly applies to cloud and platform engineering.


And, lastly who do you hope to be in the future as a result of this scholarship program?

At the end of this scholarship program, I hope to have enough experience with microservices to be able to competently provide design and architecture decision at my work. I hope to be able to specialize in a path and focus my energy in the correct technology that can help continue my relevance at work.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How I Fixed My In-Sink Garburator

Our kitchen garburator had been out of order for the past few weeks and I thought I would give it some tender loving care this Christmas Holidays because we'll need it. It's a Mainline Model 1900 and has been very dependable for the past 6 years. This happened a few times before and all I did was run a wooden barbeque stick through the serrated edges of the garburator blade to dislodge whatever gunk was in there and that did the trick. It didn't this time and I was ready to spend some money.  I was tempted to call our plumber and have them fix this for me (here take my money) but I thought to myself, how hard can this be. I was also tempted to take the whole thing apart to clean whatever was causing the blade to not spin but I'm sure I would have lost a few fingers or two if I did that. What did work was using something everyone already has lying around the kitchen - a butter knife. Take the butter knife and find the gap in the blade to insert the tip of the kn...

Success Story Renewing my Okta Maintenance Certification thru Examity

 The Okta Certified Professional certification had to be renewed every 2 years and my maintenance exam was due on July 30, 2023. I was confident about passing the exam because I had just completed an HRIS mastering project and Okta. However, the exam format was unnatural using DOMC (discreet option multiple choice), so I had to study and review a fair bit of material to prepare.  After studying a decent amount, I scheduled my exam for Tuesday, June 27, 2023. After hitting the next page, there was an error so I hit the back button and tried again. I was able to get it scheduled but didn't know that the exam date was actually scheduled for Sunday, June 25, 2023, for some reason. There was a confirmation email stating that but of course, I did not read it because I was focused on the Tuesday, June 27th date. I continued cramming until Tuesday but realized in horror that I was a no-show when I logged in 30 minutes before the exam at 10:30pm. If you have ever done offsite exams, yo...

Student Story: A Bertelsmann Technology Scholarship in Artificial Intelligence

As part of the Udacity Bertelsmann Technology scholarship, I was asked to write a student story to provide feedback on the overall experience. There were 3 questions on a Google form and these were my answers to those questions below.   Fast forward to July 2021, I was selected into phase 2 scholarship and have submitted all 3 projects for grading. I even submitted all the career services projects including Resume review, LinkedIn review, Cover-letter review, and GitHub review.  Make sure you don't click "Graduate" yet until you are ready because you will be kicked out of classroom chats so make sure you have said your farewells in advance.  What do you want the world to know about you?   Loving husband and father to two wonderful kids. My passion is academia and enjoy the journey of learning. I have accumulated many certificates, diplomas, and degrees over the years. Some from self-study, some from traditional brick-and-mortar schools, and more recently from on...