GSSoC’19 : The Roller Coaster ride!
By: Girlscript Summer Of Code
Tags: Open Source

Anxiety, Excitement and Expectations…! 😅

After applying for the GSSoC’19, I was anxiously waiting for the acceptance letter. In the meantime, I used to explore several answers on Quora about the experiences of people participating in the GSSoC. The mere essence of being able to contribute to open source projects used to pumps me up. I started polishing my tech skills and began working on some individual projects. Day after the day, excitement grew leaps and folds. Some of my friends had already received the emails. Well, still fingers crossed!🤞 Finally, on 14th Feb, I took a sigh of relief as I received my acceptance letter! 🤩

Moving on! We were supposed to have our community bonding period before the actual coding started. With the likes of Front-end tech stacks and beginner level Python, I browsed through several projects based on those stacks. Little did I knew, that my camouflaged passion for Competitive coding and love for Data Structures and Algorithms would spot me an awesome project “Algo-Ds-Notes” by Aman Jain. 🤗

So, finally I pulled up my socks and was determined to give my best shot by contributing to this repository!

Not every start, is a happy start, mate! 🥺

Before the contribution period commenced, I was struck with a chronic medical problem ☹. I had to leave my college and return to my home town for further medical checkups and diagnosis. I was informed that I had been infected with some kind of respiratory infection and it would take about 2–3 months treatment. During this, I was strictly advised to take rest and refrain from any physical activity.

For a moment, I went blank as this situation can completely shift somebody focus. You would be missing your classes, your college friends and more over your body would be taking stress during all this. I left any hope of putting my efforts in GSSoC.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man! ✨

“Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity!”

For about fifteen day after the start of the contribution period, a thought pricked my conscience. I always wanted to contribute to such programs. I had been reading about several articles and blogs about open source contributions, how to make most of the tech stacks, where to contribute! My prime objective always used to be being able to build something, an app, a software, a program, that could make a positive impact on several lives and ease their way of living. I always had an urge to make my contribution using best of my skills. I had an opportunity here. I can’t let it slip. This platform gave me all. A community, mentors, projects, ideas, knowledge … I couldn’t afford to loose it. I had to do it.

I mustered up my courage and went bang on! I went through several new algorithms and their implementations. Coded them up on my local system, executed them, worked fine. And finally, made my first PR! 🤩

Let the game begin! 😎

Always writing the codes without caring out the indentation was a normal stuff to me. The first lesson which I learn here was the indentation and its importance in writing the professional codes. Being asked for reviewing the PR multiple times, made me realized that I had a lot of learn and improve.

I rectified those mistakes, excavated more about Indentation and Kaboom! My first PR got accepted and merged! 🤩 So, my name got up to the ranklist of my project! I had made my way. For someone who was just kickstarting the journey like me, was really an awesome moment!

After that, for some period of time, I was away from the contributions, again due to some health issues.

But after that, there was no looking back!

I shifted myself into the fifth gear! Explored through several of the tutorials and articles on algorithms. Revised the basics of Git and Github. Searched through the issues and created new one if necessary. Asked several doubts from mentors and got my mistakes rectified in the PR discussion. Spending nights, coding and making the documentations.

During all this, the mentors were quite supportive! We had several slack channels to address each other doubts and problems. They were quick to respond.

I also joined other communities even though I did not contribute to them. I could see, everyone was giving his/her best. And this is reason why we had an awesome community at GSSoC! 👏

Not the end, but the beginning! Folks! 🙌

The urge to make to the top of the ranklist and make significant contributions kept me moving!

Till date, I am among the top 10 contributors of my project(with more than 75+ contributors!).

Major takeaways from this journey:

Life will throw many problems and obstacles, but if you have enough passion and determination, you will overcome it. Keep learning from mistakes, ultimately they will make you stronger. Never loose hope and miss an opportunity. Trust the process. Never step back from making a start, it takes a little effort but its worth it!

Finally, I would like to thanks my mentors speciallyAman Jain, Rishabh Garg, Aman GuptaandManbir Singh Marwah for supporting me and correcting my mistakes every time I faced them.

Also, I would like to thanks my peers Anshu, Divya, and Anupam for constantly motivating and lifting my spirits during my bad phase! and yes! my seniors Aman bhaiya and Rimjhim di too!

Thank you Girlscript team especially Aakansha and Yashika, for providing me such an opportunity to learn and grow! This was a very memorable journey. I wish all the best to all fellow open sourcers!

Keep Contributing!

You can connect with me on Linkedin , Github or Facebook! 😇