In early 2019, I took a class at Cornell University on contributing to Open Source and worked with a team of 6 under the guidance of a WordPress mentor. I will share my experience as a first-time contributor to WordPress: how I familiarized myself with the codebase, got in touch with the WordPress Core (Privacy) and Gutenberg community, and pushed my first few patches out. I hope to entice you into joining this challenging and exhilarating group of WordPress contributors that will allow you to build impactful software and keep your developer’s edge razor sharp.