I’ve known about Outreachy for a few years now and always wanted to apply since free and open source software has been a passion of mine. I didn’t pursue it because I wanted to wait until my child was a bit older since trying to do this and having an infant seemed daunting. I finally took the chance this last October (2018) since all the right elements in my life lined up. When I looked at the projects listed for this round I was excited that there was quite a few for Mediawiki. I’ve been using this software for years and really wanted to contribute back. I noticed that they had a QA automation project which really peaked my interest since I had worked in software QA and am interested in practicing and improving my programming skills. The project seemed to be everything I was looking for. I found the subject to be something I was both comfortable with applying to as well as challenging enough to be meaningful for me.
I started theapplication process and decided to focus on the QA automation projectsince I figured it was better to full engage with one project thentry to divide up my time and setup up and learn two. One thing thatwas confusing about the application process was that not all thelinks to the project were stated on the Outreachy project page and it took me a bit of time to figure out where the task exactly was on Phabricator. Once I figured that out, everything seemed more straightforward. I emailed my mentor a few times to both check in and ask questions about setting up the development environment. I also was advised to document my process and issues which arose. I found this to be helpful to both explain what I encountered and to help give me some perspective (which lead me to solving some of my own problems!). I tried setting up some time weekly to devote to working on the application and found that a steady, paced schedule worked well for me and my stress levels! I also wanted to give my mentor enough time to get back to me because I’m sure she was very busy herself with all the other applicants. I also sought out local QA and programming meetup groups since I felt that listening and talking to people who work with similar technologies and projects would help me with what I was doing as well as provide some additional support if I were to get stuck. I found that reaching out to local communities and friends to support me through the process helped to keep me motivated and focused on my goals. One last thing that helped me was reading alum’s blog posts about the application process. I hope that this post will help someone else in the future as others have helped me. So to all that want to apply, Good Luck!
