GNOME

I was accepted last week to the Womens Outreach to work on accessibility and art. I was really nervous about applying, since I am new to open source, and honestly, really new to computer use at all. I got my first laptop for my birthday in 2007, and while I have learned a lot since then, I am still very unsure of myself. I'm excited to be working on GNOME; very happy to have the opportunity to spend forty hours a week doing things I enjoy. I think the internship will be challenging, and I intend to learn a lot, and hopefully make contributions that will be valuable to the community.

So far, my experience with open source has been really positive - the people are nice, the software is excellent, and for once, I don't have to try to pay for things I can't afford. Some of the information is really confusing - at first I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I was somehow expected to build icons by writing the code in Pygtk. I know, fail. I was suddenly in the middle of the computer, and able to build everything from the ground up to the sky, if I needed to. It was really shocking and interesting...

Anyway, I hope that I haven't gone on too much. I'm excited to be working with all of you, and I can't wait to get started. If you see me looking lost, please point me to the right road. I'll keep at it until I get there.