Outreachy & Systers

“Outreachy is a paid, remote internship program that helps people traditionally underrepresented in tech make their first contributions to Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) communities.” Apply for the next round!

After getting a bachelor’s degree in theatre, I fell into teaching. I taught 8th grade pre-algebra and 8th grade special education English. I quit after that second year, completely burnt out. I claimed there was no way I was ever going back into the classroom. The next year I started teaching high school theatre and stayed there for three years. I loved my students. I love theatre. I hated the bureaucracy of the education system in the U.S. I hated that while I taught theatre, I worked 80 hours a week. There’s no way I can do that now that I have kids. I know a lot of people do, but I just can’t.

My husband’s a software developer and as I began talking about what to do with my life, he started waxing poetic about coding. I figured I’d give it a shot. Over the next few years, when I found some time, I’d start a new tutorial. I’ve done CodeAcademy, edX courses, started Eloquent JavaScript a few times, and dipped into some of his other random books and suggested tutorials. I’ve got a decent grasp of HTML and CSS, some basic knowledge of UX/UI and writing documentation, and signed up for a GitHub account. I never got too far past the beginner’s section of anything before I’d get pulled back into parenting and life, then by the time I went back, I’d have forgotten almost everything I’d worked on.

After staying home with my small people for four years, I realized that I was bored. While I love my tiny monsters, I don’t love being sequestered with them for days on end without any adult interactions other than the occasional barista or grocery store cashier. My four year old loves preschool and my two year old will start this fall and that means that it’s my turn to decide what I want to do with my life. You know, figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

Again.

In February I saw Alice Goldfuss’ tweets about her amazing Teespring Campaign of ‘Ladies is Gender Neutral’ t-shirts (seriously, go read that post and laugh at the complete meltdowns men had when they realized the shirts were only available in women’s sizes). All proceeds went to Outreachy. I had no idea what Outreachy was, but if someone was going to create a campaign this hilarious to make money for them, I needed to find out.

As I scrolled through, I realized that I was eligible! Being eligible for an internship is not something that usually happens when you’ve been out of college for almost ten years. Unfortunately, all of the projects were outside the range of my abilities. So, I spent the next few months working on more tutorials (yet again), working on some documentation and blog posts for Gulp, and checked the website again when the projects came out for the Winter round.

This time there were several non-coding projects, including this one for Systers, an Anita Borg Institute Community. The more I read about the organization, the more I wanted this project! Systers’ is committed to supporting women in tech. Delving into open source for the first time feels pretty overwhelming, so the idea of doing so within an accepting community of women seemed much less intimidating.

I checked out their github, found a small documentation related contribution to make, and contacted May to see what else I could do, as I worked on my application.

I was accepted! Now I’m combing through all of Systers’ repos and creating documentation and processes, to lower the barrier for entry for new contributors. I really enjoy finding order in the chaos and ensuring that everyone feels safe enough to make a pull request.

Finding ways to ensure that people of all ages and abilities, around the world, can participate in open source communities should be a priority for all projects and I love that Systers is so passionate about it.

I’m excited to help create an environment where absolutely anyone can make contributions and hopefully find the confidence they need to continue being involved in both the Systers’ community and the Open Source community as a whole.