Monday was my last day interning on Wikimedia’s Action API project. I completed my tutorial that evening, publishing it to the main site after getting final feedback on the third draft. About a month before that, I had finished editing my twenty-fourth API article, and set to work on the demo. You can view the finished demo over at the MediaWiki Github.
I’ve gone a long period between blog posts, and that’s only partly because we stopped having weekly prompts after week 7. As I got deeper into the internship, I started having to juggle article writing with working on the demo, and on top of that, the articles left to edit were getting more difficult to improve.
There were times when I found myself getting very stressed out and noticed that the quality of my work was slipping. I had to give myself permission to relax and breathe. Being able to do so made me realize how bad some of my previous work environments had been at forcing employees to work, even though they were too fatigued to produce quality writing or code.
My work ethic comes from doing long hours as a content writer, just to make a decent daily rate. Some tech companies, despite the higher pay, have a similar culture of low supervision combined with high pressure. I think for my next job, I’d like to pick a company that doesn’t have that kind of culture. Being able to stop and start made this project one of the favorite ones I’ve worked on.
In the end, I finished 24 out of 27 articles, got some practice designing 3 web apps, trimmed my collosal 48k tutorial down to just under 15k, and completed a full demo in Flask. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about HTTP, MediaWiki, Powershell, and Python, got some practice in with Adobe XD, and have developed more confidence in myself as a technical writer.
I’m pleased that I was able to hit all of my goals. Working with the Action API was always interesting, and trying to figure out why things weren’t working the way I thought they should took me down paths that taught me a lot about the history of the software. It also pushed me to think about how software and APIs are designed, and how their design must change over time, while being careful not to break older parts of the codebase.
I also really enjoyed working with Flask for the demo. Using it forced me to think in a new way about designing websites and apps. I’ve been working heavily with Javascript for the past few months. Being able to create a website without writing any Javascript at all felt very strange yet very good – like pulling off a magic trick.
While I was working on the demo, I promised myself I would take March off to rest. It hasn’t quite been shaping up that way. The second to last week of my internship, I started getting recruiters contacting me for technical writing roles. I think I want to re-focus on technical writing for now, because it allows me to learn a variety of new technologies while on the job, and takes advantage of multiple skillsets. I can get bored easily, but writing and researching always grabs my interest.
I’m back on the job hunt, and hopeful something good will pan out. In the meantime, I’m still trying to take time to rest, and have plans to travel a little around the East Coast and hang out with loved ones. I’m going to Woodstock, NY soon, and I’d also like to hit up Philadelphia and Providence, for the art, music, and museums. On the techie side, I’d like to use Flask for a fun wiki-oriented side project, and maybe explore Clojure or Go.