Ibrahim Olawoyin

I didn’t expect something as simple as setting a profile picture to turn into a full debugging session. But that’s exactly what happened. It started like any normal onboarding task. I had just set up my Fedora Account System account, everything was working fine, and I thought, “Let me quickly update my profile picture and move on.” Simple, right? I clicked “Change Avatar.” I was redirected to Libravatar. I logged in. I uploaded my picture. Done. Or at least, that’s what I thought.

When I first saw the task, it felt straightforward. The kind of thing you expect to finish in one sitting without much friction. The instruction was simple: use Docling to convert a PDF and explore its outputs. Nothing about it suggested complexity. Nothing hinted that it would demand more than just running a few commands and documenting the results. So I approached it the way most people would. I installed the tool, set up my environment, and ran my first command.

It's 11 PM on a Friday. You refresh your email for the hundredth time, and there it is: "Your initial application for Outreachy has been approved." You do a little victory dance. You screenshot the email. You tell everyone who'll listen. Then you open the Outreachy project list, and reality hits: Now what? I'm writing this exactly five days into my contribution period, while the panic is still fresh enough to remember but far enough past to laugh about.