One month and my OPW experience will finish. I was reading a blog post of Gabriela Salvador Thumé, an OPW intern involved in a Mozilla Crash Stats project named Socorro.
This week closed a cycle of 2 months in this amazing OPW experience. I am so glad to be part of an incredible team like Socorro. I was reflecting about our hopes and expectations, sometimes we feel that we don’t have to dream huge because the risk of the dream come true is little, but if we always dream at the lower limit, we never are going to experience the happiness of doing something that really challenges you. I know that doing challenging things all the time can be frustrating, but the gratification is so much higher than the fear of do not getting whatever you want.
I am digressing into this because I have just one month till the end of the OPW and I am enjoying so much that I don’t want it to end. But I am sure that because of this awesome experience I am rethinking a lot of thoughts that I have about myself, like my capability of doing what I really want (maybe sometimes I feel a little about getting into the impostor syndrome).
She was reflecting about this internship and I’ve started thinking about these two months that have passed; about all the expectations, feelings, experiences…
It seems to me to have lived two months of challenges, professional and personal challenges. It’s like when you go to a game shop and you see a shelf full of puzzles. You decide to buy a puzzle game because you like it, you feel that you can finish it and that it will fits good in your home. Then, each day you look at the puzzle and you add a new piece.
The same way each day of this internship has been a new challenge, a new peace to add to complete the puzzle. Sometimes you find the pieces that perfectly match to the others and you feel like you are doing well but, there are days when you discover that a piece is not in the right place and you need to remove it and start working on it again.
This internship is spurring me on keep on working, it is spurring me on be confronted with others, to let the fears go away, not to be too much worried about mistakes that can always happen, and to hardly work to reach my goals and improve myself. You could sometimes feel like have chosen a puzzle too great for your abilities but maybe you should only need more time, or more studies, more efforts and I’m sure it will be ok…you’ll finish the puzzle!
Every new experience is a challenge, you’ll never feel like everything is clear at the beginning but the gratification at the end will be the reward!