2020 has been a really eventful year for me. There is a lot I have learnt and it has been truly life changing. A year full of bitter sweet memories, here is a glimpse of how 2020 was for me!
The M.S Pursuit
After completing my undergrad, the next step for me was going to be pursuing an M.S. By January 2020, I was almost done with my applications. All that was left was to wait for the admits/rejects. The application period was difficult with the SOP, LORs and transcripts but this period where I had to wait for the decision was even harder! On February 25, I got accepted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I was super excited to start grad school!
The COVID-19 Storm
On 19th March, the first case of COVID-19 was announced in Mumbai and a lot of things started going downhill since then. Apart from the lockdown, online lectures and virtual graduation the worst part was my M.S plans going in the drain. The University was not offering a deferral and given the scenario the only option I had left was to reapply. I was supposed to fly to U.S.A in August but with the current change of plans I had no idea what I’ll do for the rest of the year!
Google Summer of Code
“When one door closes, another one opens”
Since my M.S plans were canned, I had nothing to do all summer. Even though I was pretty late I decided to give a shot at GSoC.
May 4 2020, I got an email with the subject line “GSoC 2020: Congratulations, your proposal with Wikimedia Foundation has been accepted!” My joy knew no bounds. 🎉
My project was ‘Upgrade WebdriverIO to the latest version for all repositories’. I still remember the day my first commit got merged in May. From that day, the graph has only gone up! Now, when I look back I see a total of 40 merged commits. Here’s a little breakdown of them.
| Month | No of merged commits |
|---|---|
| May | 14 |
| June | 12 |
| July | 9 |
| August | 5 |
You can find all my patches on Wikimedia Gerrit here. GSoC was an unforgettable journey and an awesome learning experience. Best summer ever!
All Aboard the MentorShip
According to my Google Summer of Code mentor Željko Filipin, mentorship was the logical next step for my career. Just a few days later, I stumbled upon a message from Wikimedia Org Admin Srishti saying they were looking for mentors for the next round of the Outreachy internship.
Soham and I suggested two projects, Selenium Framework Cleanup and Evaluate Microsoft Playwright as replacement for our browser automation for the internship. We had a total of 9 applicants, 3 for the first project and 6 for the second. So, the application period was a really busy one. After a lot of discussions and careful evaluations, we decided to mentor Harriet. The internship has been going well so far, you can view the progress here.
Along with Outreachy, I was a part of two other Open Source Programs:
Other Highlights
- Speaker at IETE Interncon 2020
- Distress–An Application for Emergency Response and Disaster Management
- A Study on existing Friend Recommendation Systems in social Networks
- A study on Cloud enabled Applications and their Security Issues
- 1st place at HackerEarth’s Recruit-a-thon (You can view the my project submission here)
What I learnt this year
- Cooking (it was really difficult)
- Work From Home
- Self Discipline
- Good Coding Practices
- There is always a silver lining
What I hope to do differently next year
- Have a regular sleep routine
- Read more often
- Have fixed working hours
- Stay up-to-date with news
Final Thoughts
Looking back, this year has been the most happening year of my life. There was a lot of coding, debugging, testing, caffeine and Netflix (planning to write a blog on all the movies and shows I watched and rating them). Quite the roller coaster it might have been but 2020 has been a year of tremendous personal growth and learning. Can’t wait to find out what 2021 has in store for me. Cheers! 🍻