This year we had a lot of very good proposals and so we have a one of the highest number of students (7) to mentor for GSoC. Congratulations on the effort to learn about the program, get involved and submit successful proposals!
The fun part begins now!
If you have not done so already, please reach out to your mentor and seek further advice about your project. Each one of your projects can be implemented in multiple ways, some more complex than others. I strongly advise you to create a concrete plan based off of your proposal with your mentor and aim to stick to it. The MariaDB Server codebase is a complex one with lots of different parts, however your mentor can guide you to ensure you have a successful GSoC.
Remember that you are here to learn about Open Source, what it means to be part of an Open Source community, to interact with the community, all while becoming better programmers. Please take advantage of this opportunity and keep your technical discussions public, on Zulip
https://mariadb.zulipchat.com, and on our developer mailing list
https://launchpad.net/~maria-developers. By keeping your discussions public, you get the benefit of not only having your mentor see your questions but all of the MariaDB community. You never know when someone might lend a hand in case your mentor is not yet online. :)
The mantra of our community should be that we are always welcoming to new people. Do not be afraid to ask questions. There are no bad or stupid or silly questions. The only key requirement is that you first make an effort to find the answer yourself and only afterwards seek outside help. If you can show a bit of involvement, the community will show you the same.
I recommend that you agree with your mentor on some form of weekly progress reporting, via either a blog-post, an email, or something similar that can be publicly shared. I can not stress this enough: we are working on an open source project, our work must be done in the open and it is important to
show the world the good we are doing.