Rejected Once, Merged Next

In this talk, I’ll share my journey of making my first open-source contributions - one that got rejected and one that got merged. I’ll walk through how I started exploring projects, set up my first environment for Signal Android, what went wrong in my first PR, and how I improved in my next contribution to Forklore.

The session aims to show that rejection isn’t failure, but feedback that shapes your skills. It’s a beginner-friendly story to help more students overcome hesitation and confidently take their first step into the open-source world.

• Rejection is part of learning, not the end of it.

• How to find and approach beginner-friendly open-source projects.

• The importance of reading contribution guidelines and communicating with maintainers.

• Confidence to make your first pull request — even if it’s small.

• Open source is about growth, not perfection.