Exactly 355 days ago, I took this photo while on a family hike in Central California. The mountain air was so crisp and refreshing, the sights were breathtaking, and food we cooked on our portable gas stove tasted like a feast fit for a king. Little did I know that this basic nature photo that I took on my phone in passing would so poignantly symbolize themes throughout my life.
I was born and raised in Springfield VA, and then moved and spent most of my middle and high school years in Ashburn, VA. After graduating from high school in 2012, I got my Bachelor of Arts in Cognitive Science at the University of Virginia. What is “cognitive science” you ask? Basically an interdisciplinary major that combined cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. Shoutout to Jeff Hale, one of my General Assembly instructors who recommended the book “Range” by David Epstein, which I plan to read so I can further embrace the wide scope of my educational and career experience (more on this later).
My first job out of college also happened to be on a mountain in the middle of the woods, though I wish it had as nice as a view as the picture I showed earlier. I worked as a Youth Wilderness Counselor for troubled teens at a therapeutic boarding school. Yeah, quite the mouthful. I thought I was going to just be talking with angsty adolescents and help them talk about their feelings, but boy was that one heck of an understatement. This job ended up being the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life (although that may change over the course of the data science bootcamp I’m currently attending at General Assembly, I’ll keep you guys posted). We did do a whole lot of listening to the students’ frustrations and helping them express their emotions appropriately and resolve interpersonal conflicts. All the while we worked on building projects to help the students have something to take out all their energy on, and also so they have a common goal to work towards and feel proud of accomplishing. The year spent working as a youth counselor was truly a coming of age story for that sheltered and naïve college graduate. I could go on and on about the things I learned and experienced at this job, but this blog post would end up being completely sidetracked, so maybe I’ll dedicate a whole blog post to this topic some day.
After my year as a youth counselor, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I missed technology. My brain craved intellectual conversation and mental stimulation. Being in the woods, we couldn’t even use our cellphones for the 5 days we would be working, so I knew that it was time to reconsider the course of my career. I took programming classes in college and enjoyed them thoroughly, but for some reason I never fully considered going into programming as my actual career. After working in the woods, I decided that I would give programming a try. While teaching myself some Javascript online, I started applying for internships, because I knew that I couldn’t go straight into getting a programming job, especially without a portfolio or a degree in programming. I was ecstatic to land an internship for a company that made computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS). The company was working on the second iteration of their product because the competition was starting to make their product look obsolete. They used the React Javascript library on the front end, and that’s what me and all the other interns worked on. As I continued to try to teach myself Javascript through countless youtube series and courses on MOOCs, I couldn’t help but feel lost and without any direction. I was also starting to feel the pressure of not having an income at the time, so I decided to search for any position that was even remotely tech related, as a sort of foot-in-the-door into the tech space. As I applied for these jobs and continued to ponder my future, I realized that maybe working in IT would be the dream job for me. Being an IT specialist sounded like the perfect combination of being able to help other people and being able to solve technological problems. Lo and behold, I was ecstatic when I landed an IT job at a relatively large construction company in Azusa, CA (I totally forgot to mention I moved to California because of my wanderlust, insufferable FOMO, and curiosity to see if the west coast is actually the best coast). The company hired me to train me to eventually be the sole full-time IT administrator of about 500 employees. Not only would I be working with workstations(mostly Windows, but sometimes iOS), but also company smartphones with MDM systems, CCTV and security, printers, projectors, company landline phones, and anything else that was remotely technology related. It was a daunting task, but I was excited and eager to take up the challenge.
Fast-forward a year and I was basically a one-man IT machine. Whenever I could find time between setting up workstations and troubleshooting faulty devices, I’d teach myself how to use Powershell because it felt like programming, and I wanted to satisfy this constant tech related itch I had over the years. Admittedly, sometimes I just wanted to open up Powershell and do basic things like navigate through directories on it while helping employees just to wow them and seem like a pro hackerman IT aficionado. Near the middle of 2019, circumstances led to me leaving the IT position and helping out with the family insurance business. Along the way I studied to get my license to work as an insurance producer in California.
As time passed, I couldn’t help but feel that tug towards working in the technology sector. As I did more research, I increasingly felt that data science is the field for me. That’s how I decided to sign up for General Assembly’s data science bootcamp. In each of the jobs I had, I was inadvertently using data analysis. In fact, that was the part of each of my previous jobs that I loved most. From learning about how the brain works in college, to identifying the root cause of a student’s outburst, to troubleshooting a malfunctioning computer, I was always drawn to the questions “how?” and “why?”.
So now you’re probably wondering what in the world any of this has to do with the picture I put at the top of this blog post. Please bear with me as I explain the profound significance of the photo. The horizon represents my love for exploring the unknown and pushing my boundaries, be it moving to the opposite end of the country or jumping head first into a job in a completely new industry. The clouds represent uncertainty of what my future will hold, but my willingness to face it head, scared or not. The flowers in the foreground represent my love for personal growth and learning, and constantly striving to be the better version of myself. These are all themes that I can draw connections to throughout my life, and are things that I try to live by.
Typing this blog post was surprisingly therapeutic for me. Thank you for sticking with me this far into the post, I’m truly honored. I know this wasn’t the most data science-related blog post, but let’s say I wrote this for the people who will eventually want to learn more about me when I become famous for my ground-breaking, industry-shaking work in data science. Haha..
Huge shoutout to my instructors and Outcomes Coach Jeff Hale, Jacob Koehler, Claire Hester, and Lisa Dubler for putting up with all my questions and weird emojis in Slack, and for ultimately preparing me to soar on this exciting (and terrifying) data science adventure!