Cover image credits : makeuseof.com
An overview of my journey from discovering Outreachy to being selected as an Outreachy intern!
Initial Stage
A few months ago, I was scrolling through my Twitter feed when I came across a tweet from Outreachy Internships. This was the first time I had heard about them. Curious, I visited their website and gathered some information.
Fast forward to January 2020, I received an email announcing the start of the initial application period. I quickly filled it out and waited for its approval.
By late February, I got another email stating that my initial application had been accepted! After that, we were supposed to choose projects from the participating organizations. Sounds like a simple step? Well, it wasn’t.
The Contribution Period
I started by sorting out the projects based on my preferred programming language and then shortlisted the ones that interested me the most. Next, I cloned their repositories and tried running them locally. This is where I lost quite a bit of time along with mental and internet bandwidth. 😜
That’s when I found my project, gdrive-to-commons under Wikimedia. The setup was simple in theory, yet it still took me two full days. It required API keys from both Wikimedia and Google to implement two different OAuth workflows. I had to reach out to my mentor when I got stuck with the Wikimedia API keys. Once that issue was resolved, my progress sped up and I was able to understand the project and its workflow.
This was my first time contributing to an open-source project. Writing fixes for issues wasn’t the hard part; the challenge was learning how to write clean and well-documented code. I received several helpful suggestions from my mentor, Tony Thomas. For example, using absolute imports instead of relative imports to improve readability, and keeping migrations clean.
When the COVID-19 lockdown was announced and my college sessions were suspended, I suddenly had ample time to work on the project. I also contributed to other projects, like WikiContrib: Gather & analyze user contributions on Wiki & GitHub. For this one, I worked on dockerizing the project, with guidance and reviews from Srishti Sethi. Her feedback helped me contribute successfully to my second open-source project.
This experience gave me a big boost and motivated me to solve as many issues as I could. I also learned about the git-flow of open-source projects and gained an understanding of how they are managed. In the end, I submitted a total of seven PRs to my project — six of which have already been merged!
Suspense Stage
After recording my contributions on the Outreachy dashboard and submitting my final application, I continued working on a few minor issues. However, because of my academic commitments, I couldn’t make major contributions during this time.
I eagerly awaited May 4th, 2020 — the day the results were to be announced. Seeing my name on the Outreachy alums page filled me with pure joy. It felt like a true reward for all my hard work. But this wasn’t the end — it was just the beginning!
Final Thoughts
The whole experience of applying for an Outreachy internship and being selected has been a joyride. Had I not been selected, I wouldn’t have gone empty handed. Working on open source projects helped me develop my skills and give my self confidence a boost.
I thank Outreachy, Wikimedia and my mentors, Tony Thomas and Srishti Sethi for giving me this opportunity. I am looking forward to making the most out of this opportunity and doing my part for this community!