That time of my life…(I)
So it’s that time of my life when I graduate from college. That time of my life when I turn 21, and that time of my life when I crack GSOC.
So(I think I’ve started using “SO” too much 0.O) I’m going to write about my experience with GSOC/Outreachy, and some tips for everyone who wants to apply to it. For anyone who doesn’t know what Outreachy is, it is similar to GSOC, but it is only for people from underrepresented community, it is organized twice a year, and very few(15–18) organizations participate in it. I think I’m going to describe this journey in 3 parts.
Lets get started with part-1.
2015
Outreachy Round 10
I attended a Python Workshop taken by Dharmit Shah. He has been a mentor to me and many of my friends. I had known about GSOC before, but I first learned about Outreachy from him. He encouraged us to participate. I always thought that GSOC was the tough one, because there was a lot of competition. I was not confident enough about getting into GSOC, but I thought if I tried I could get into Outreachy. I was already late for Round 10(May-August 2015) of Outreachy. So I decided to apply for Round 11(Dec 2015-March 2016) of Outreachy.
Outreachy Round 11
Organizations were announced for Round 11, and I was not sure which organization to choose, so I did “ctrl+f: python” . 3–4 organizations popped up. One of them was OpenStack. I then told about this to Dharmit s̶i̶r̶, and he said it’s a good, but OpenStack is little tough. In my mind, I was like, “I can crack it. I’ll prove I can do it.” But as it has always been with me, my motivation did not put up with me, and I just wasted that year watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S and HIMYM.
2016
Outreachy Round 12
It was again that time of the year when Organizations participating in Round 12 of Outreachy were announced. I again went through the same process, “ctrl+f: python”, again few organizations popped up. I again opted for OpenStack, thinking that I will do my best this time. I even started earlier this time. I started by introducing myself on the channel. Without deciding what project I wanted to apply to, I started to go through bugs on launchpad.net . I went through bugs tagged as “low-hanging fruit” but I couldn’t find a single bug that I could fix! I hadn’t even setup an environment for running OpenStack. So I started with setting up the environment for OpenStack. I tried 10–12 times to get the environment setup right! If you have ever setup OpenStack on your physical device, you know how long and (sometimes) painful that process can be. Have you had those moments, when you had been waiting for 3 hours waiting for that movie to download and something went wrong at 99.9% download? That happened to me almost every time while setting up the environment. I’ve read that OpenStack installs quickly if you install it on cloud. But I don’t know why I did not try that o.O
So anyway, after many unsuccessful attempts, I gave up on Outreachy. I looked into other organizations, but I was just not that motivated. So I totally gave up and decided to go for it in the next round.
But I remember writing “crack Outreachy 2016–2017, and GSOC 2017” in my bucket-list.
Outreachy Round 13
I went through list of organizations. But I had my final year project, and semester exams to be conducted, so I decided to opt-out of that round and apply for the next round. I was working as an intern in Ahmadabad based startup named Oizom. I met many new people there. I had been involved with many organizations that year as a volunteer. I had volunteered as a coach at a DjangoGirls Workshop, and also as a mentor at many workshops organized by Python Express. I even started Mozilla Club at my college, though it didn’t turn out to be a huge success. But I did not completely waste the second half of my year.
I promised myself to get in the next round of either Outreachy or GSOC.
That’s it for part-1.
