Sugarplum, I'm up against the Indians.
I make a lot of noise in my tech community for someone who has never successfully participated in GSOC or Outreachy before. All that talk about opensource and community development but deep down in my heart of hearts eh, I'm scared of the Indians.
A small introduction: Sometime in August 2017 during the second semester holidays of my first year in the university, I attended a women techmaker meetup led by our tech lead, Amanda. Derick, Courage and Perside were there too. They told us about outreachy and open source and why its a good thing to apply and lots of other stuff. Speaker after speaker emphasized that the skills learnt during the 3months we will spend contributing, are second to none. They said that the communities are friendly, the contributors are friendly, they themselves are here to guide us when we need help and feel totally lost.
Dear sugarplum, at that event, we went as far as opening the outreachy website and looking at the projects and organisations participating in the May round which was going on at that time. Amanda said we should chose a project that we like. Sugarplum, the one that made my heart skip a beat was one project like that in the open robotics foundation. Oya now, the skills needed were docker and Python3; my humble self knew only C programming that I had kept learning after the introduction we had in school. Derick said it was not a problem at all at at all. He said the next round of outreachy was coming up in December and could learn Python and Docker by then. Sugarplum, you know that energy that you have after watching a motivational video na?, ehen that is the energy that I felt.
Two months passed, and I had made no progress in Python programming for the strangest reason on the surface on the earth; the name 'Python' reminded me of snakes and I am extremely ophidiophobic. As a matter of fact, when I googled 'fear of snakes' in order to get a proper name to write here, I had to use one hand to block part of the screen so I do not see the accompanying images that show with the word on google. A little too late though, my heart is still beating faster than normal; I had a peep.
Sugarplum, like a typical Kamer child, all barriers of fear can be conquered when 'strong recommendations' are received from an elderly person. In short, uncle E said I must learn Python programming, and so I did.
Jema was a gem in my first months of learning. He was my mentor who kept pushing me, and giving deadlines and checking up such that I ran out of excuses and completed a whole book on Python basics. After a 2-3 month period of being under his remote mentorship( basically through github and weekly updates), I thought to myself "there is more to this" and so I bought a Python mastery course on Udemy. We are in 2018 now. I said that I won't apply for GSOC or Outreachy because I wanted to learn more first; I didn't feel ready( are we ever?).
Then 2019 came, I applied for Outreachy, my application did not even make it past the initial application phase (Due to the war, our school timetable was neither stable nor outreachy-friendly). No worries, I started preparing for GSOC 2019. Those were very trying moments. I saw all sorts of version control misbehaviour and discovered what happens when an Ubuntu linux operating system 'gets mad'. More so, I had my first encounter with the Indians.
The speed at which the Indians replied to questions and made pull requests to the repo made my head spin. I could barely wrap my head around the codebase at that time, yet I woke up every morning to a notification that a pull request had been made. The work ethic of India is something that I truly admire, their commitment to excellence, their support for each other, their resilience inspires me.
I wasn't accepted for GSOC 2019, and if I must be totally sincere to myself, the student who got in, fully deserved it.
What is life without plot twists? sometimes we need to compete with even those who inspire us. Sugarplum, I'm up against the Indians again; this time on a project I really really love, one I enjoy doing, one that I understand. Most of all, this time I'm prepared.
Bring It On
#Outreachy2020
I make a lot of noise in my tech community for someone who has never successfully participated in GSOC or Outreachy before. All that talk about opensource and community development but deep down in my heart of hearts eh, I'm scared of the Indians.
A small introduction: Sometime in August 2017 during the second semester holidays of my first year in the university, I attended a women techmaker meetup led by our tech lead, Amanda. Derick, Courage and Perside were there too. They told us about outreachy and open source and why its a good thing to apply and lots of other stuff. Speaker after speaker emphasized that the skills learnt during the 3months we will spend contributing, are second to none. They said that the communities are friendly, the contributors are friendly, they themselves are here to guide us when we need help and feel totally lost.
Dear sugarplum, at that event, we went as far as opening the outreachy website and looking at the projects and organisations participating in the May round which was going on at that time. Amanda said we should chose a project that we like. Sugarplum, the one that made my heart skip a beat was one project like that in the open robotics foundation. Oya now, the skills needed were docker and Python3; my humble self knew only C programming that I had kept learning after the introduction we had in school. Derick said it was not a problem at all at at all. He said the next round of outreachy was coming up in December and could learn Python and Docker by then. Sugarplum, you know that energy that you have after watching a motivational video na?, ehen that is the energy that I felt.
Two months passed, and I had made no progress in Python programming for the strangest reason on the surface on the earth; the name 'Python' reminded me of snakes and I am extremely ophidiophobic. As a matter of fact, when I googled 'fear of snakes' in order to get a proper name to write here, I had to use one hand to block part of the screen so I do not see the accompanying images that show with the word on google. A little too late though, my heart is still beating faster than normal; I had a peep.
Sugarplum, like a typical Kamer child, all barriers of fear can be conquered when 'strong recommendations' are received from an elderly person. In short, uncle E said I must learn Python programming, and so I did.
Jema was a gem in my first months of learning. He was my mentor who kept pushing me, and giving deadlines and checking up such that I ran out of excuses and completed a whole book on Python basics. After a 2-3 month period of being under his remote mentorship( basically through github and weekly updates), I thought to myself "there is more to this" and so I bought a Python mastery course on Udemy. We are in 2018 now. I said that I won't apply for GSOC or Outreachy because I wanted to learn more first; I didn't feel ready( are we ever?).
Then 2019 came, I applied for Outreachy, my application did not even make it past the initial application phase (Due to the war, our school timetable was neither stable nor outreachy-friendly). No worries, I started preparing for GSOC 2019. Those were very trying moments. I saw all sorts of version control misbehaviour and discovered what happens when an Ubuntu linux operating system 'gets mad'. More so, I had my first encounter with the Indians.
The speed at which the Indians replied to questions and made pull requests to the repo made my head spin. I could barely wrap my head around the codebase at that time, yet I woke up every morning to a notification that a pull request had been made. The work ethic of India is something that I truly admire, their commitment to excellence, their support for each other, their resilience inspires me.
I wasn't accepted for GSOC 2019, and if I must be totally sincere to myself, the student who got in, fully deserved it.
What is life without plot twists? sometimes we need to compete with even those who inspire us. Sugarplum, I'm up against the Indians again; this time on a project I really really love, one I enjoy doing, one that I understand. Most of all, this time I'm prepared.
Bring It On
#Outreachy2020
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