Hi everyone!! Welcome back to the fifth article in my series of articles as an Outreachy intern with Wagtail.

Background Information

After I finished university last year, I never had concrete plans for my career but I knew I wanted it to be in Tech. My parents are like every other parent and they have always wanted me to practice what I studied which is Production Engineering but I always knew that wasn't what I wanted.

Then I got into an internship program where I started learning about frontend development. I felt an excitement that I had never felt even while studying at the uni. I love the process of identifying problems, thinking out solutions to those problems, implementing them, and seeing that my solution is helpful to people out there. I have tried out other stacks like data science, machine learning, and UI/UX design but I never enjoyed doing them. But when I tried out front-end development and read about software engineering, I knew that was what I wanted to do.

Career plans before and during the internship

Before I got into the Outreachy program and started contributing to Wagtail, the goal I set for myself last year was to improve my JavaScript skills. I never knew about open source communities nor did I know how much contributing to one could help me and not just in my career.

After I started contributing to Wagtail, I found out that I have improved so much in my tech skills. I've worked with TypeScript, Stimulus, testing with Jest, jQuery, Python and Django. Even though I'm definitely not an expert with these skills but I've touched all of them which is pretty amazing!!

My mentors have been super awesome. We've held meetings and discussions where I talked to them about my career goals and what I plan to achieve in Tech. And in order to help prepare me, my mentor Thibaud has helped review my resume and given me some helpful tips to make it better and up to industry standards.

We also discussed having a mock interview. Thibaud found a job listing by Microsoft and I was given some days to prepare for it. Then we had the mock interview, I was so nervous but I tried my best to answer the questions. There were some places where I flopped, and couldn't answer some questions. But overall, it was a wholesome experience, my mentor was merciful 😉.

After the interview, Thibaud reviewed my responses to the questions and pointed out some things I could have done better and some that I answered really well. He complimented me a lot that I even felt like a pro! It was a great experience and we plan on doing it again!

Conclusion

Overall, contributing to open source is a great way to hone your skills and meet great people. I know what I want in my carreer and I'm working hard to achieve it!

Thank you so much for reading!!