First of all, this question is first for me. I’ve asked myself so many times if I truly want to be a Data Scientist. Now, I have made up my mind and fully committed to pursuing this journey. I want to journal the process of what got me here, so that when my future-self Data Scientist looked back and can remember the reasons I have become. As I’m writing this, summer 2019, I have been working as an accountant for more than 10 years. I’m a happy mother of three little awesome kids. So, you can guess how busy my daily life would be. At this stage, it looks like my future is already a set path, continues to work, and raise my kids to go to colleges then finally retire and take care of my family and my garden. So, then what got me to think about changing my career? Do you believe that “everything happens for a reason”? I love this quote and I strongly believe in it. It started with Warren Buffet! “How?, Why? Warren Buffet?” You would ask. Once, I accidentally read some interviews and articles about Warren Buffet talking about career advice, like this one Warren Buffett Shares His Secret: How You Can ‘Tap Dance to Work’, I suddenly asked myself if I’m truly thrilled and passionate about my work and I tap dance to work every day? I thought long and hard about it, and I finally had to admit that even though I’m generally happy with what I’m doing, I’m not super excited about it. I feel lacking something in it but I don’t know. We keep moving on with our daily things, daily issues and daily life. However, the more my kids growing up the more we talked to them about college, career and remind them to find their passions, think about their future jobs that they love to do and can create values for the society and also get good paychecks or they can employ them self; that they are going to have a happy life and to fulfill their wishes. Every time, I am in those conversations, there’s something reminds me about myself. “Am I really walking what I am talking? Am I pursuing my passion and doing the things I love?” And, it always ended with taking care of family first, safety first. Or, it’s too late to think about change now. Or, you are present and happy with what you have. I’m still in that comfort zone until … One day, my husband told me a story about Target used customer data to predict consumer behaviors and the incident about how it predicted a teenager girl, a Target customer, was pregnant even before her family knew anything about it. It was a sad story to every mom or dad or anyone. But it got me thinking about how they can use data to predict like that. Then, the first time I came across the word Data Science. The more I read about it the more I found things related to it like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, etc. I also found that these technologies have been used in many aspects of life, from Amazon Alexa that helps us a lot at home, to Google DeepMind that beats human in the game Go to become the world champion, to self-driving cars, genetics research to treat cancer and to almost everything else in our modern life. Then, I came across the title Data Scientist. It is one of the hottest jobs now and also gets paid well. I started researching what Data Scientists do and what it takes to become one. The more I research about it the more I feel the excitement in me and the urge to find out more about how to change my career and get into Data Science. I’ve been an accountant for such a long time. I do like the work and did well in my job and got recognition from my managers and colleagues. However, I’ve always really only enjoyed the meaning behind the accounting numbers, and the insights that it brings to business for decision making. I haven’t really liked the accounting procedures and manual work, because I felt that it’s somewhat I am not really interesting. I studied hard when I was a student and I had done it well. I have some continuing education. I have some experience in finance and business. But I don’t have any knowledge or experience with programming at all. It happened that my husband, my buddy, works in Computer Science field. He thinks Data Science will fit me well and he encourages me to pursue my Data Scientist career dream. It might be still in planning mode. And again, it just happened at the right time that Flatiron school opened the very first Immerse Data Science Bootcamp near to my city. I decided to apply to Flatiron school. In order to get admitted to Flatiron school, everyone has to finish their Bootcamp prep course and pass a technical interview. It took me a lot of works to finish the preparation for the course and finally i got accepted into Flatiron school’s Data Scientist Bootcamp. There is a good thing that my domain knowledge is still very useful in new career. Now, I’m a Data Scientist student at Flatiron school. I study every day at school and at home. Since I still do part time accountant job, I have a lot of time pressure and I’m still struggled a lot. However, they are the good ones to me, that is the cost of change for being better. Besides, I have chance to meet great teachers, coaches, and friends, my team workers. I am glad that I have their support and collaboration. I’m fully committed to my journey. I have my family fully support me to pursue my passion; my husband is always generous and patient with me; my kiddos are being much more helpful than before, they know we do need their help. I have never felt like this before. Even though I know it’s a very tough goal to achieve and rough road ahead, I am still an early bird, also still tap dance to school every day now. I know I’m never a smart student in the class, but I’m always a hard working student. And, I’m always an eager person to learn about Data Science from anyone and anywhere. From the past data of my life, my academic results, my professional experience, and my work ethics, I predict that I will tap dance to work as a Data Scientist soon. I love Data Science.
There's one thing which is always true to me that it’s never wrong to try to be better at any time. I try my best and I won’t regret when I look back. That is my story about how I choose to be a Data Scientist.
“IT ALWAYS SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL IT’S DONE” — NELSON MANDELA —
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