I am Malik Olalekan Olabiyi, a graduate of the Department of Computer Science in the Faculty of Computing and Information Technology. My journey at LASU was fulfilling, I relocated from Osogbo, Osun State to Lagos for schooling because of LASU, and it treated me rightly. I built projects, toured Lagos, built a startup, Locator.ng, got recognised by the Nigeria Computer Society, and finally graduated with a First Class.
Aside from graduating with a First Class degree, I'm proud of building Locator.ng as a result of my observations and interactions with my immediate environment, finding solutions to problems is what I live for. I was never directly involved in formal leadership, but I attended LASU Debate Society events, briefly joined LASU Striders, and built a lot of personal projects throughout my time on campus, including the idea that later became my startup.
Adjusting to Lagos after leaving Osun State to live independently for the first time was strange at the start of 100 level, but with time it got easier as I adapted and built up gradually. People will always meet again, a lesson I picked up after running into a former secondary school mate from Osogbo years later at LASU, the world is a small place. I took second position in the Don Etiebet Innovative Prize Award, and our final year project got recognition for making last-mile delivery affordable by connecting senders with passengers already heading toward receivers in Lagos.
Lagos itself has been my biggest source of inspiration, I always wanted to increase my exposure to the tech world, and I knew that was where everything was happening.
My advice to current and incoming students is to do the right things, cover the basics: attend lectures attentively, study effectively, and follow the rules, then see the magic. I missed a maximum of three official lectures throughout my entire stay at LASU. As the saying goes, quitting early leaves you behind, and giving up along the way leaves you further behind still, that leaves the rest of us who kept going