Today, I am extremely excited and I thought to share the news with you all. In January, I applied for the Outreachy internship for the very first time. In March, I made it to the contribution phase, and finally, on May 4th, I was selected as an Outreachy Intern for Metal-kubed.
I want to talk briefly about what motivated me to apply, the challenges I faced, how I overcame them, and why you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to apply for the second round this year when applications start in August.
The first time I tried applying to Outreachy was in August 2022, on reading through the form, the questions seemed quite cumbersome, so I made excuses until the application eventually closed, I felt it was too competitive, and being a newbie in tech, I had zero chance.
In January 2023, I was rounding up my internship at an organization called eHealth Africa, prior to this, I’d been applying for 5 - 10 jobs on LinkedIn every day for 3 months at least, but I’d made no progress. It dawned on me that I was going to be out of a job and financially frustrated especially if I didn’t get retained at eHealth Africa (which I wasn’t).
On new year’s Eve, I researched for and listed out open source programs and set reminders for dates they would start applications.
Somewhere in the middle of January, Outreachy started applications, it took me about 5 days to complete the application. I created a Google doc and answered each question there first before copying them to the website.
Disclaimer: chat GPT helped a bit
On March 6th, I received an email that I’d been selected for the contribution phase. I had this sudden adrenaline rush, instantly I read through the next steps.
That night, I made a list of all the projects I found interesting, they were 5 in total. By morning I had picked the two I was sure I wanted to do and sent out emails to the mentors.
I made my very first contribution to Metal-kubed less than 24 hours after I’d been selected for the contribution phase. Afterward, I completed one-half of the contributor task assigned to Metal-kubed contributors.
The second half didn’t get completed till a couple of hours before the deadline (no jokes).
At this point, I was also applying to GSoC (Google Summer of Code) and GSoD (Google Season of Docs), and boy!
Anyways, my mentors were super supportive through all of this, they made sure to answer every single question I had.
Between the first couple of days, to the weeks that followed before the deadline, I’d started doubting myself a lot, the other Outreachy project I’d chosen was quite confusing and by the time I realized Metal-kubed was where I truly wanted to focus, the deadline had approached.
I salvaged the little time I had, found broken links on the website, and tried to fix them while concluding the initial task. Up until the day I received the mail that I had been accepted as an intern for Metal-kubed I was working on my contribution.
I always tell my friends, Outreachy is NOT for professionals, it isn’t for developers only or tech gurus, so if you’re a UI/UX designer or technical writer PLEASE APPLY!
If you’re learning any of these, PLEASE APPLY!
A bulk of Outreachy’s contribution phase is a lot of learning (from other applicants mostly) and trust me after the contribution phase, even if you’re not selected and you actually put in the work, you’d come out more open to learning.
Also, Outreachy isn’t just for ladies, presently about 25 guys got internships, so please discard the thought that Outreachy is gender biased, if you put in the work, you would be selected.
The application and contribution phase can be very very overwhelming, I know a lot of people who gave up halfway through.
So, i’ll leave some tips if you decide to apply https://www.outreachy.org/
For the Application phase, start early so you’re not overwhelmed with giving too much all at once, you can choose to answer one question every 2 days so you’d have finished before the deadline.
For the Contribution phase,
- Reach out to the mentors, and make contact with them in time.
- Join the community, ask questions so it shows your interest
- Get an accountability partner, someone who’ll check in with you on your progress, preferably someone who has more knowledge in the language, tool, or technology you choose to work with.
- Don’t be afraid of projects that want just 1 intern and don’t run from those that need 4 or 5.
- Select projects with tasks you’re interested in learning from, it’ll be easier to find questions to ask your mentors and sight issues that you can fix.
- Stick to 2 projects and stay on them, you might be tempted to show interest in more than 2 but I assure you it’ll only distract you from your main focus. Don’t be like me, please take your time to find the project you want to work on, make proper research.
- Lastly, look for good first issue tag on the list of issues on GitHub, this would really help
I know you’ll apply so Goodluck!
P.S - You deserve Outreachy Internship, all you need to do is put in the work!
