Hi,

My name is Ajayi Olatunji, from Nigeria. You can call me 'Tunji. I am presently an Outreachy intern with the Debian project. I am working on creating a yarn plugin to resolve node modules installed via apt, and packaging new and updating existing Debian packages.

I am a self-taught programmer, therefore I have tried several languages and technologies, I started out with PHP but was not impressed by it, so I moved to Python with the sole purpose of understanding Object Oriented Programming because I read a lot of books that mentioned OOP jargons without giving proper explanation with PHP, before picking up Python I did Ruby and Ruby on Rails for few months without any headway, I did python and used it for Data Science for few months before I decided to settle with JavaScript and major on back-end engineering.

I do not think I really have free time, but whenever I am not working, I am either scrolling through several apps on my phone, reading books, or writing poems, I mostly listen to music or Christian podcasts in between these activities.

Core Values

I have two core values and I will discuss each of them to the best of my ability:

Empathy: I have struggled in becoming who I am and knowing what I know today, I have seen myself struggle with concepts very simple and straight to the point, I have been in situations where I have to get my job done despite going through a hard time in some other aspects of my life. Seeing this play out in my own life has taught me to treat others with grace and empathy, especially when I am working in a group or when I have to mentor a less experienced party than myself, I have found out that humans go through a lot of situations that they may find very hard to talk about, especially at work. Therefore, whenever I notice someone lagging in performance, instead of immediately judging and scrutinizing them I rather try to find out whatever issue they are going through and help in whatever I possibly can. People tend to give their best and their trust to one when such one is helpful rather than condemning.

Hard work, Determination, and Perseverance: If I were to be economical with my writing, I should separate this one point into three different points, but I believe that having one of these three without the others will either not yield any result at all or not yield the desired result. When I set a new goal for myself, I anticipate the difficulties associated with it and I keep reminding myself that nobody ever promised me that it was going to be easy.

For a reasonably long time in my life, I was in love with the idea of being an actual programmer, creating cool stuff just from the corner of my room, and making the world an easier place to live in, it was a really cool picture I had in my head, but I really never had the time to put my desires into action because I was in a field totally different from computer technology, I studied Food Technology in school, it was so consuming and overwhelming that had to struggle to create time to learn the basics of programming, I thought I was going to get easier after school but it never did, until a day I made up my mind I was going to let go of other things and just work towards the person I really wanted to be, I had to quit other activities in my life, because I had to learn solo I had a lot of frustrating moments but I did not let that determine my next action, I kept allowing the picture in my head to keep me going and working really hard. I had reasons to give up, but I was determined to become what I imagined and I persevered despite the process being tedious, me being in Outreachy today is an offshoot of the hard work, determination, and perseverance I did not downplay.

What motivated me to apply to Outreachy

For anyone reading this I would like to help you have an idea of what Outreachy is, in understanding what Outreachy is you will see why I applied

Outreachy is a program that gives interns the opportunity to work in Free and Open Source Software(FOSS). Outreachy internships are open to applicants all over the world. Internships cover all aspects of FOSS, programming, design, documentation, marketing, and other kinds of contributions. Interns get to work remotely and are not required to relocate. Interns are paid a stipend of $5,500 USD for the three-month internship. Interns have a $500 USD travel stipend to attend conferences or events. Outreachy is open to women (both cis and trans) and people of other gender identities that underrepresented in the open-source community. This internship is offered twice a year and each applicant must be available to work full-time, 40 hours a week during the internship period.

Why did I really apply?

I have always been a big fan of Open-Source and hearing about it from a friend got me really interested that I decided to give it a shot, I felt it could be my open door into the open-source community.

I started watching out for when the next cycle was going to begin and I started messaging ex-interns on Twitter for advice on how the internship was like and how to go about the application, fortunately for me, they were all nice and responded respectfully, after about a week of trying to decide on what project to work on, I found Debian project to be attractive so I reached out to the mentors and started making contributions. The contribution got very tedious (I was practically clueless sometimes) at a point that I felt I was not going to be accepted into the project, but the mentors were very helpful and provided help anytime I needed it, despite that, I still felt very much inadequate, but I did not stop contributing even after contribution stage ended, in fact, I made up my mind that I was going to keep contributing to the project, even if I was not accepted. For me, being an open-source contributor is a very big deal and it felt like something out of this world, I applied to Outreachy to challenge myself, I have had several ups and downs in this tech journey, I needed a win to prove to myself that I am going to win and Outreachy came out to be a very big blessing at that. When I received the acceptance mail, I was so excited that words always fail me to describe that feeling, I am grateful that against all fears I did not stop at the application essay stage because that was also a bit challenging for me, I find essay writing very challenging but I had to beat my weakness.