How I am becoming Data Scientist
I have started studying Data at General Assembly. I could say the reason why I am here is luck of decision made mistakenly at many points at my life. If I succeeded all of my challenge in life, I’d be going on other life. Do not take negatively, I am happy with what I am doing now so that it was lucky to fail some challenges.
I graduated university with degree of Chemistry field and I was planning to have career in same field. While I study in university, I experienced many experiments such as optics, particles, electricity, image impression survey and so on. My main research was particle reaction and struggling to figure out how I could get particles that I wanted. I felt it suits me as I was good at chemical study so that I did not have doubt doing that but at the other side, I felt bored as well because it was not challenging stuff and what I needed to do was very simple routine experiment. I wanted to have some stimulus and hoped there was something that would grew me up, However I did not really take any action.
While I was in university and between graduation and job hunting, I spent some time to study coding. One of my classmates was plotting graphs for his research with Python. I never heard what it is and did not even know there was a way to plot a graph without Excel. He looked so cool that he was typing mysterious sentences in dark editor and it looked messed up mixed pancake but once he ran the script, it immediately plot pretty graph. I used Excel and I did not understand how he could work on the experiment report faster than me. I asked him how he did it and he briefly taught me how to code in Python. I gave up in 1 week though.
One day I took a class of computer language, C. It was not fundamental class for my graduation but I was curious of something challenging so that I decided to take the class. As I imagined and later on regret bit, it was not good for beginners at all. I had several homework and I made plenty much for effort and spend really long time for that. I knew that my evaluation would be low. There were students who majored in computer were taking same class. Sadly my project was compared to theirs so of course my project quality was far away from those students. I lowered my GPA because of this. I felt slightly regret because of the credit but I found myself enjoying to tackle such difficulty. I got interesting experience but since then I was away from such challenging for a while until graduation.
When I about to graduate, I was thinking about my career. What occupation would be nice for me? Would I be happy with that? Would I be committing great job in the company? Beside my chemical study experience, I was curious of other job category. I researched how a banker would be, how a sales person would be. I imagined what if I became them. After all I did not have many options as I needed to land job as soon as possible and I was not qualified enough at may offers.
Before I joined GA, I was working as a IT support specialist. My role was troubleshooting PC, intranet, mobile device, internal web applications. It was very meaningful and helpful experience for me. Not only for me, others must think same too. I was not specially familiar with PC and network system until I started the job. I remembered I was surprised that there was such convenient tool as Snipping tool, what a amazing tool, I do not have to take a picture of screen and send rough resolution pics. I was belong to IT company though, I did not basically code. However, there was chance to touch computer language and development RPA.
As I mentioned above, my role in previous company was supporting IT issues. IT was pretty difficult when I just started the job. But of c as time passed, I felt comfortable with my role. I used to spent much time for 1 trouble but later on, I could handle very smoothly without any unnecessary action. Same thing again. I became used to it. I had some space in brain to think of other things. I wanted to challenge something. This is same thing that I felt when I did many experiments in university. I could do things well that I was good at but felt bored. I briefly started to look for job opportunity as a software engineer because it was fun when I was trained to make application but found it was not friendly with me as the requirements referred much skill, experience, knowledge of development with computer language. I did not have either degree of Computer Science nor work experience. It drags me not to start my new career as Software Engineer as it was not easy to study Computer Science in university for 4 years. It would take so much time and money so that I could not make decision.
Even if my expectation to become a Software Engineer was down, I kept studying by myself with online service. During I was studying on the web service, I hit Data Science course. It triggered me wondering how mysterious AI was. When I first used Facebook, I was scared that my friends was shown on recommended friend list. It was first experience to wonder that how technology knew my own information that I did not provide. Also when I shopped on Amazon, they recommended items that I absolutely wanted to see after I shopped some. The other thing that surprised me was Google Translate. I had used online dictionary to translate but it was a reference that I need to look up each word one by one. It cannot translate sentence. Google Translate could handle with sentences, and amazing function for me was it corrected my typo. I had no idea how it could know what I wanted to type even if I provided wrong words. I was very excited to see the Data Science course since it included AI, Machine Learning and NLP. I went over Python, Javascript and SQL on Software Engineer course and I found Data Science was worked with Python. It was lucky that I studied Python so that I smoothly went into Data Science course. I was very into it to know how the websites know what I wanted to know that I did not tell them.
The specific moment that I decided to go to GA was I found an advertisement about Coding Bootcamp. I had heard about it but I did not know what exactly they were. I hit the advertisement and read it all over it repeatedly. I had thought to go to programming school but I did not think it would help my job hunting as I saw many job offers required bachelor degree. One paragraph changed my fixed mind. Their graduates mostly landed jobs at the field of their study. I did not mean I did not believe programming school would not help for job hunting, I just did not even try to now about it. I assumed it is perfect opportunity to challenge new career that I expected since I was in university. I applied GA
I read an interesting article that Big Data can find who you are. Many organizations are collecting any data and they makes model which explains how typical person behave. If you like this and this and this, they know who typical person who likes same things is. There are ethical issue to find out person’s information so that this must be taken care of. However this technology potentially can change how humans live. If it becomes faster to share information with others or faster to find our what you are like, we can develop technology faster and faster. Now we can see how scenery at the other side of Earth looks like easily and even if we do not go out from house at all, food will be prepared and delivered, we can communicate others, we can make money. I know it is not always good side but I believe it is good thing to have more options to choose. I would like to make more options people can take and keep this life fun.
