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Everybody Struggles

I did struggle, more than a bit actually.

During the application process, I was stuck on setup as I mentioned in Experiences applying to Outreachy. This was resolved with help from my mentors and Adam Shorland. Upon commencement of my internship for Mediawiki on the project Improve Mediawiki Action API Integration Tests I ran into issues and got stuck on setup AGAIN. This was strange as I was active all through the application and waiting process. I had 94 tests passing, 1 pending and 38 failing as opposed to the current status of the tests which was 133 tests passing, 1 pending and 2 failing. I just didn't understand the errors to start with. It was very confusing for me as things were fine days earlier. I spent hours tying to understand the errors. I tried deleting the current setup and started all over but the errors persisted. I tried https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installing_MediaWiki_on_XAMPP and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38378914/git-error-rpc-failed-curl-56-gnutls. I was all over the place, confused and pissed that I wasn't making progress.

My mentors walked me through different solutions and that encouraged me as they were ALWAYS ready to help. In the end, the fix was switching laptops. The one I was working with had some features blocked by the admin. What made the difference was the fact that I wasn't hesitant to reach out for help and my mentors were always ready to reply my mails. They got on calls with me when necessary.

The simple truth is EVERYBODY STRUGGLES. Chances are someone somewhere ran into the same issue before you did. Reaching out for help gets you solutions faster as you get more people thinking about the problem and sourcing out solutions. My advise is to reach out once you are stuck for 30minutes or an hours tops. If the error message doesn't change say 30minutes to an hour later, YOU NEED HELP  PLEASE and DO NOT HESITATE TO REACH OUT.


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