Starting of an adventure?

Hey!

I hope you all are doing well and are safe at home. These are tough times but I’m sure we all will get through this soon.

One Year ago!

May 06, 2019:

A newbie was waiting for some unexpected results. But it was on the 6th of May last year when he received:

Hence, I was rejected for the first time :). It was my initial year of open-source. Being a newbie, I didn’t know much and had an imposter syndrome. I didn’t know from where should I start and what to do.

For what I saw, several of the newbies out there felt the same way before entering an organization. Some got through, while a few gave up. But here is the truth, giving up is never an option.

Instead of sitting back, the very next week, I introduced myself on the IRC channel #debian-diaspora (thinking I have nothing to loose). Back then, my first open-source community was Debian! I kept contributing by taking one step at a time towards the team. I have written a little about my journey with Debian here.

One year later, Here I am! :)

As the saying goes, “Taking rejection positively or negatively depends upon us. It’s our perspective”!

March 15, 2020:

I was so worried to choose a project (thinking am I eligible enough?). I still remember, how on March 15th me and utkarsh2102 (for whom I’m always thankful :D) discussed about the project, and that was it. At the end of the day I messaged one of the mentors of the project, cdesai, asking if it was too late to start.

He politely replied, “Hello Samyak, it definitely isn’t too late and if you’re confused about anything at all, feel free to ask as many questions as you’d like”. He has been a positive motivator throughout the process. Thanks for reviewing my proposal and guiding me. Then finally I joined the #debian-mobile channel, and started interacting and contributing to the team.

Nothing was smooth in the beginning, but that happens with everyone, isn’t it? No-one knows everything or anything from the starting, everyone adapts and start learning. That is one of the most important lesson I learned on my journey.

May 04, 2020:

Me being anxious, overthinking, refreshing the mail and the dashboard twice and thrice And, then came the result:

Acceptance Mail from GSoC2020 :)

I feel proud to share that I have been selected in Google Summer of Code, 2020 at Debian. Debian has been a part of my growth throughout, and working under the same org for the whole summer is something I always dreamt of. My project is Android SDK tools in Debian. I’m still figuring out the work, will be soon on track :P

I am really lucky to be guided by my mentors. I finally got to meet them yesterday!

The one where I meet mentors!

Special thanks to them, Hans-Christoph Steiner(@_hc), Andrej Shadura(@andrewsh), Kai-Chung Yan(@seamlik), Chirayu Desai(@cdesai) and Saif Abdul Casim(@m36) and the awesome Debian community for accepting me as a Student Developer for this year’s GSoC!

The Community Bonding period has started, lets see how it goes!

echo "Adieu, till next!!"