Hi!, my name's Cornelia, and I am currently an Outreachy Intern in the December 2022 - March 2023 cohort. I am working on the ChRIS Project, a project developed as part of a collaborative effort by Red Hat, Boston University, the Mass Open Cloud(MOC), and Boston Children's Hospital. Now you might be wondering why I gathered you all here.

This is an introduction to well me. I have a BSc in Medical Biochemistry, and I got to know about this beautiful world of programming in 2018 in my third year at the university, and as intimidating as it seemed, I wanted to be in it. I wanted to learn more about it so I started attending meetups, conferences e.t.c it was the most fun I had had all school year, It was a very welcoming space that made me feel like belonged.

Fast forward to 2020 I am a graduate and decided to take programming seriously, I received quite a shock as to how brutal the "real world" was, I am not a competitive person and try to shy away from competitions. the thought of failing was enough to keep me in a stagnant state, I couldn't "put myself out there".

I tried making friends but ended up developing an awful inferiority complex (shocker), I felt "less than". I knew I needed to be grounded and took a break to remind myself why I wanted to get into tech in the first, I was preparing for a sad exit if what I found wasn't enough to keep me going, which led me to discover what core values are and finding the said values that related to my personality.

Community And Curiosity

I left this sheltered land called the university where everything I wanted was within arms reach, a place where I could call up friends I met during one of the several meetups and we would see in less than 30 minutes, I could head over to the computer science department and have engaging conversations with strangers.

After I left school, I was away from all that and next came the pandemic. I became so overwhelmed with everything, I lost all sense of direction. That was until SheCodeAfrica. Being a part of SheCodeAfrica, surrounded by like-minded people and mentors that understood what I was going through was a blessing, and I began to strive! it was like being back at the university but better, I was exposed to so many opportunities and whenever I felt like I was spiraling, there were endless people I could rely on to get me back on track, now I volunteer there to also help others like me navigate this treacherous waters called tech.

I am a very curious person, and that should be evident from my BSc to my current profession. To know what I wanted from tech I made it my mission to learn as much as I can about it and it was a lot! my curiosity took me from the shores of learning UI/UX, frontend development, and backend development, to now DevOps engineering. I wouldn't say I am a master of any but it gives me this unique set of experiences that make my life as a software engineer easier. curiosity keeps me going and I don't wish to stop learning anytime soon!

Outreachy

Outreachy arranges three-month paid internships with projects using free and open-source software for persons who are often underrepresented in such projects. The Software Freedom Conservancy is the organization behind the program.

I got accepted as an outreachy intern the third time I applied and it was from lack of trying(another shocker). In the previous attempts, I got through to the contribution stage and back out because I kept seeing it as some kind of competition instead of as a way to delve into the world of Open source and contribute to projects that I was always interested in, that was my goal this time and I had so much fun contributing and made awesome friends along the way and now I get to keep doing that for the next 3 months and even after!.

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony." —Mahatma Gandhi