The Opportunity of a Lifetime

Written by Brandon Taleisnik - iXperience '14 & '17, University of Michigan '17

“Brandon Taleisnik, please report to baggage services. Brandon Taleisnik, baggage services”.

That was my first South African greeting.

“WOOHOOO WELCOME TO CAPE TOWN!”

Ah, that’s more like it.

After finding out my bags were left behind in Amsterdam, I soon received a real South African greeting by none other than the incredible iXperience team.

My iXperience has been unlike any experience I’ve ever had before: I have explored the beautiful city of Cape Town on the weekends, immersed myself in a new culture, made tons of incredible new friends…oh and did I mention I learned how to code in just 4 weeks?

Going into this coding course, I had no idea what to expect. Let’s just say that after the first lecture, I knew I wouldn’t regret my decision to come here. The head and assistant instructors, Salman and Rafi, turned out to be not only the most knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and patient teachers I’ve ever had, but also incredible role models and friends outside of the classroom. This is the first time that I’ve viewed learning as something fun and something I want to do instead of a forced activity that I have to do.

In the last 2 weeks, our session split into groups and brainstormed ideas to solve problems we have noticed in the world, and create functional web applications from scratch that help solve these problems. When we all gathered to present our projects, I think I can speak on behalf of all of iXperience that I was beyond impressed with the quality of the final projects we all created in such a short amount of time while still being brand new to the coding world.

To take that a step further, I am now interning at a local tech company, Liquid Thought, where within the next 4 weeks, two of my friends and I will leave with not only a functional web application, but this time we will be creating our own startup with our own business model, a product, and tons of resources to help our startup succeed in the real world.

The most incredible part about this whole program is that I have gained a new network of 20 of the brightest, most talented students at some of the best universities where we can communicate with each other down the road about any future ideas we may have and can work together to make a difference.

Yeah, this is an incredible chance to learn how to code in an accelerated environment. Yeah, this is an incredible place to live for 2 months. But when you combine the two? Now that's an opportunity of a lifetime that is simply too tempting to pass up.