So, this post was drafted years (no, literally years) ago when I was applying to Outreachy, and it just stayed a draft forever because I guess I thought there was more to it. It turns out, there wasn't, because if there was, it would be there. Ha! I still think it's interesting though, and I want it out of my "untracked files" when I run git status*, so here it comes, in all its overdue glory. 😉

*: I could have another branch for this draft, and commit it there. But then I will just forget it exists. Also if I did that and ever actually finished it, it would entail way more git overhead than I want to deal with. So - publish or bust, baby!

24 MAR 2017

Oh my goodness. There are so many things pulling me in different directions, making me second guess where I've gone with my application to Outreachy, and with a few days before the deadline, I still feel like a jumping bean bouncing around between projects and priorities! Here are some of the factors influencing my decisions.

  1. How much I stand to learn from participating in this project
  2. How well organized/set up/documented everything is
  3. How helpful the mentor/people involved are to me
  4. How friendly the mentor/people involved are to me
  5. How much autonomy and freedom I think I'll have
  6. Whether my mentor or any of my team members are female (is that sexist? like...this whole thing is gender-based so..?)
  7. The languages and technologies used for that project
  8. How capable I think I will be of completing the project without driving my mentor nutz with questions

I'm also kinda worried that people normally just choose and focus on one project to apply to, whereas I have multiple (actually..SO MANY) that I would love to work on and I hope they don't all get lost in space! 😢 That would be so sad face!

Back to the present!

This post is so beautifully typically Heather. Of course there's a whole list of 8 decision factors, qualified with the fact that the 8 are only some of what's influencing my decision. Also, it turns out, I think this is probably also a good list to bring to job interviews.

Except that I would do well to worry less about the last point. If I suck, they can fire me. :angel_face: Realistically though, if I suck, I will get better. That is to say: if I ask a lot of questions, I will learn. And asking questions can highlight existing problems in systems (technical ones or people ones), and make other people feel smart and useful (cool!), and build rapport with colleagues. And if feel that I have too many questions, I can spread them out to the internet, and stack overflow, and other friends. Nice! Now stop worrying. 😃

The end.