My road to Outreachy

It is now 12 days ago at the time of writing this article that I read the most rewarding email in my inbox. I only had to contain myself because of the environment but I am sure would have screamed louder when I read that acceptance email as an Outreachy intern for the December 2022 to March 2023 Cohort.

At that time I forgot all the struggle I went through to utilize the little resources I had (financial, time and physical) and my only focus was the awe of getting chance to intern with one of the re-known big names in the industry, Debian. Now away from the excitement bit, let's get things a little clear because it wasn't out of sheer lack.

The start of it all

This was the second time I was applying to Outreachy and I knew that if I hadn't learnt from my first mistakes enough to go through this second time then I'd be a 'failure'. The mistakes in my first application (which actually went through till the contribution stage) where;

1. Putting my few eggs in many baskets and expecting them to hatch. By this I mean, trying to work on more than one project so that I increase my chances of being accepted for internship. Sometimes it is risky but I have come to accept that whoever advised not to put all eggs in one basket must have been a coward. You see it is easier to concentrate on one goal than having a lot of goals to give attention too at the same time. I decided this time round to dedicate all my time, extra time and thoughts on just this one project and give it my all. In the end I knew that if I failed, i'd not regret since I gave in my all and if I went through, I'd also be happier since I knew I deserved it and put in my time.

2. Getting noticed takes more than just contributing. For my first application, all I prioritized was how many Pull/Merge requests I was making in a particular period of time and didn't know there was more to getting noticed and being accepted than writing code, contributing to technical documentation or even designing that graphic. During the internship application and the real internship, you should know that you are interacting with people and not machines. People with feelings, emotions, bias and judgement. You may be good at coding but poor at communication or good at both but poor at commitment. There are a lot of other soft skills that you must show that you have during your application phase. Share progress, engage with your mentors (some banter doesn't hurt), make suggestions outside your project scope, interact with the wider community. the list of things you could do apart from contributing are many. You only need to know how to incorporate it within the project's communication culture.

3. Starting Contributions late. I always thought one month was not enough to make contributions and be accepted but that is because in the one month you want to make meaningful contributions to many projects at once. The fact is one month is enough, the only problem is starting in the last days of the month thinking that you'll pull it off. Don't make that mistake unless you want to live every hour with anxiety and unnecessary pressure.

The contribution phase.

So after selecting a project of my choice and knowing I had only one month to contribute. The first thing I did was initiating communication with my mentors through their emails that where listed in the Outreachy dashboard. I was easily on-boarded to their exclusive Gitlab instance (an online hosting platform for software development). With their help, I identified and curated some of first issues that I could get started with. I really didn't have enough knowledge but I was sure the only way to get dirty with everything was to take up the challenge. Two weeks in, I was already getting confident about the whole project. By the third week, my first PR was merged and I had already gained momentum. All Outreachy needs is at least one contribution which I had made. Actually my contribution got merged a few hours to the deadline. I wasn't on pressure because I knew I had given it my all.

During the contribution phase, I also met with my mentors to put together my internship proposal and I should say that it is important to draft that proposal with your mentor(s) than alone. Make the mentor part of your journey. Make sure they are not surprised or questioning what you could be up to.

After the deadline, I continued contributing to the project since there where issues I could still work on. At that point I was more about learning something new than actually the internship.

The end of the road.

In the end, my journey to being accepted as an Outreachy intern paid off with an acceptance email that I anxiously waited for for more than forty hours. I couldn't be more happier and at that point, I learnt that once you put your mind to anything and remove distractions, you can achieve it. Whereas I was happy that I am going to be getting $7000 after my internship, I was happier that I was going to learn a lot an improve my skills throughout this journey.