From YouTube ad to Data Scientist
When I first told my friends and family about my interest in data science, I got very confused reactions. Some of them were like, “But you’re already a dentist!”, “Why do you want to start over in a field you have no experience in?!”. To be honest, a small part of me also asked those questions, especially because of the way I got interested.
How it started…
I found myself coming across a data science course ad on YouTube SO many times that I finally decided to click on it to see what it was about. The link took me to the website where the course was being offered and my first thought was “why the heck was this ad following me around?”. I decided to do a little (not so little, because here I am) research on data science and found so many interesting (also scary) things. I was intrigued by how analysis can be used to provide insights to basically all areas of life, I was also terrified because it looked so complicated from where I was sitting lol.
I decided to give it a shot and started the self-paced data science course to see if it was just a passing interest or if it was something I wanted to fully get into. This course was my first real introduction into the world of data and it deepened my interest in the subject. As my interest increased, I knew it was something that I would like to pursue as a career so I started researching bootcamps. Now you may ask why I didn’t just keep doing self-paced courses, after all there a lot of self taught data scientists out there. Well, that’s because I wanted something structured with a clear syllabus to provide discipline so that I could hold myself accountable. After many late nights researching and watching numerous YouTube videos about different bootcamp programs, I finally decided on Flatiron School.
PHASE ONE
WEEK 1
The morning of day one, we had a orientation to welcome us to the program and go over the program expectations. The rest of the week was pretty intense with introductions to python and some of its packages(pandas, numpy,etc), git. The pace definitely took some getting used to, haha. At the end of day one, I was so exhausted that I went straight to bed but as the week went on, I got used to the pace and got into a sort of groove.
WEEK 2
By week two, I was more settled into the program. This week was all about diving into more pandas, descriptive statistics and SQL, web scraping and APIs. We had a code challenge at the end of this week on most of the topics we covered.
WEEK 3
Project week! This week, we got to take all the things we learnt and applied it to a project which involved cleaning data, analyzing it, plotting visualizations and making observations and presenting it to our classmates and instructor. It also involved collaborating with a partner using git/git hub. I went through many emotions this week ranging from “I can’t do this” to “I’m really doing it!” and it definitely helped to build up confidence.
How it’s going…
I love the fact that the program is very hands-on, they are very much invested in my success and hold me accountable as well. I’m confident that I made the right choice in choosing my program. I’m looking forward to diving deeper, applying what I’ve learnt to real life projects and becoming a data scientist.
