To "take stock" means to make an appraisal of resources and potentialities.1
The purpose of this repository is to act as a container for a collection of files related to your taking stock of your aspirations, requirements, and potential for contributing to open source projects. It is a private repository and you will not be able to push any changes back to this upsteam. You should clone it to your local system and update it regularly through the remaining weeks of the semester.
The goal is to help you in selecting projects that match your aspirations and skills and for which you are likely to make successful contributions. The purpose of the files that you are creating here is to stimulate your thinking about the topics of each file. You can update and change them as the time goes by.
The first file in the repository is named goals.md. It should contain a list of the various things you hope to accomplish in this course, and beyond, in the big wide world of open source software.
Each item in this list should be specific, concise, and actionable, meaning you can actually do that item. The items should therefore be verbs or gerunds (verbs turned into nouns, like learning.)
For example, "practicing programming" is vague rather than specific, whereas "improving my web design skills" is specific and actionable - you can see the difference in your skills from when you start to when you stop and evaluate what you have done. "Becoming proficient in Git" is actionable and somewhat specific, but proficiency is a moving target - you need to decide what criteria make someone proficient in Git.
The second file in this repository is named resources.md. It should contain a list of the skills that you can leverage to make a contribution. For example, what programming languages are your strong ones, or what other skills do you have? Are you bilingual? Are you good with specific applications like web design or digital photography.
Other resources are your time and availability. How much time can you give to a project? Are there periods of time in which you are more available or not available at all?
The third file is named interests.md. It should contain a list of all those things that interest you such as your hobbies, recreational activities, subjects that you have a passion for, even if it is also a school subject. Do you like music? Do you play an instrument? Do you read certain types of books? Do you fix cars or repair old computers or knit or make clothing? It all goes in this file.
The goal is to look for projects that match your interests. If you pick a project that is completely unrelated to things that interest and excite you, you are not likely to succeed.
1 According to the Free Dictionary, https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/take+stock