Success often feels sweeter when it’s born out of struggle, and my journey into Outreachy is no exception. After five attempts spanning over four years—and four rejections that tested my resolve—I am thrilled to share that I’ve finally made it! This is not just a story about getting accepted; it’s a story of Resilience, Growth, and Unwavering Determination.
My name is Formasit Chijoh Fokunang. I am a recent graduate in Software Engineering and currently an Outreachy intern working on the project “Improve the Wiki Education Dashboard test suite” under the Wikimedia Foundation. In this blog post, I’ll take you through my open-source journey and how I finally got into Outreachy.
My Open Source Journey.
From The first time I got into university, I got engaged with school clubs that evangelized about Open source and the benefit it had in propelling my career, and I took the bait. Over the years, I’ve contributed to small organizations, working on everything from documentation to code and it has had a massive effect on my collaborative and technical skills. shaping the engineer I am today.
My Journey into Outreachy and Wikimedia
After facing setbacks in my previous Outreachy attempts, I decided to reassess my approach. This time, I focused on Wikimedia—an organization I truly resonated with. As an avid advocate for free education and knowledge sharing, Wikimedia was a natural fit. I’ve used Wikimedia countless times for school and research, and it aligns perfectly with my values. Even if I didn’t get in, I knew I would still want to contribute.
Although I was confident in my React skills, I was unfamiliar with Ruby on Rails and software testing. But am always curious about learning and challenging myself with new things and that determination pushed me forward to embraced a quote that helped me stay focused:
"My mind is an endless vessel; it can learn and do anything I want it to and whatever the mind can conceive and believe with faith, the mind can achieve."
With resilience, I began contributing early—two weeks before the initial results were announced.I just believed that I was going to get in this time, and I did 🥰💫. This got me to the contribution stage which was tough, with everyone giving their best, but I stayed focused, managing to merge eight pull requests with 15 commits before the end of this stage.
As the date to the results declaration slowly came, I was nervous but hopeful. Then, I received an email asking me to confirm my availability—something I hadn’t gotten in past attempts. That was when I knew this could be the breakthrough. On the 28th, of November, I received the email I was accepted ✨⚡️. The excitement was overwhelming, but the journey to get there made it all the more meaningful.
I am particularly excited about working on this project, because it challenges me to step outside my comfort zone and offers the opportunity to learn and explore a completely new field.
I want to take this opportunity to thank my mentor, Sage Ross, for his unwavering support from the time of my contributions to now. He always responds promptly to questions, no matter how trivial they might seem. His patience and dedication to helping us overcome challenges and stay unblocked have been invaluable. I am truly honored to learn from and work with him.
I also want to thank the Outreachy organizers for this incredible opportunity and for creating a platform that champions diversity, inclusion, and growth in the tech community. Outreachy not only provides aspiring contributors like me with a chance to learn and grow but also empowers us to make meaningful contributions to open-source projects. Your dedication to fostering talent and building a more inclusive tech world is deeply inspiring.
If you’ve read this far, thank you! 🙏 I hope my story inspires you to stay resilient and keep pushing for your goals. I’ll be updating you as my internship progresses—stay tuned!.🌈💫