I want to be a Data Scientist, now!
The story of my learning path
If you encountered this article within the whole range of others, it means you probably are searching for a magic pill or a unique recipe. Whatever you call it, it does not exist.
Do not get me wrong. I do not want to ruin your dreams. My main goal is to share personal thoughts about the learning process which brought me to the point where I’m now.
Why data scientist?
I started my career in a small startup. That is where for the first time I heard slogans like python, front-end, JavaScript, PHP, and the like. I had no clue what those meant or what role they play in the universe. As strange as it sounds I was not even interested enough to dig deeper. I was just doing my job the best I could.
I finished University in economics with an international logistic specialization. Following my inner voice, I decided to look for a career in logistics. Soon after, started my first day in an international logistic company. I was happy and satisfied, full of faith, and motivated to change the world. As you may have guessed the bubble had to burst at some point.
That was my first lesson learned. I received a much lower salary than average. But I was completely fine with that. As my grandma used to say “you cannot be a director right away” I was eagerly trying to carry out my duties and lived with the hope of being rewarded sometime soon. As you can imagine it never happened. In defiance of everything, I had a strong need to prove my commitment and pushed into learning a completely new skill from the borderline of programming — VBA. I dove deep into the Excel spreadsheets on the weekends to create some valuable reports. Finally, I achieved it, being madly proud of myself…so much that I haven’t realized I was the only one excited. Nobody really cared that my simple code saved days of work on this position. I felt bad and undervalued.
Putting aside all my bad emotions, I want to highlight one thing here — I learned VBA in context. I was developing my proper project and had a really strong motivation — salary raise. I think those two factors should cross your mind every time you want to learn something new. Always learn in the context, the more it hurts (the more it frustrates you) the better. And always have strong motivation — you will need it when times get hard.
Do you think I would spend all my free time including sunny weekends sitting in a dark, rented room without any purpose? And you? Do you think you would sacrifice your free time without any strong motivation? You would not. Human nature is more simple than complicated. If we don’t have to do stuff, we will be delaying its implementation for as long as possible to put it aside in the end. This is why we have such great development in the world because we want to do things faster with less effort.
After all, we all do need really strong motivation, and we do need a context to apply it.
The same refers to data scientist self-education. After exposing myself to some VBA code and actually experiencing its beneficial effect on my daily duties I did research and figured out that Python is the most frequently cited word under Google search engine. Wait, python? I think I’ve heard it somewhere already… This is where my journey into data scientist begins.
I had no previous experience in any computer science technologies, mathematics or statistics. No previous experience at work, not even little practice (except the one with VBA). Despite this I was a hundred percent sure about my ability to self-realize in whatever field I can dream about. Please note here: I had a strong desire, but no workflow and context of how to achieve my goals.
I started to take online courses on Udemy. That was my first- to -check place. I found Kirill Eremenko and Jose Portilla great teachers. The deeper I was going in the more I wanted to learn data science. As you might know, it is a very broad field. Each day I discovered a new thing, new area which I had no idea about. So if you just lean over the surface you will see a bunch of other stuff like: SQL, Big Data, Hadoop, BI, ML, algorithms, CNN etc. Quite overwhelming how many things you don’t know.
But I was so fascinated seeing all of it, that I was madly searching for books, online courses, everything at once. You can imagine how this madness ended up ? I started reading all those must-read data scientist books but never exceeded 10 pages. The content was too complex for me at that time. I started online tutorials with great enthusiasm but never actually finished them or ended up following blankly the instructor. Does it make sense after all? You do something that you cannot apply on a daily basis. Have I wasted my time irrevocably?
“You should never regret anything in life. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it is experience.” ― Victoria Holt
Well, let me admit, that was a tough experience.
Why tough? Because you put yourself in a state of constant lack of knowledge. After all, Data Science is all about failing. You expose yourself and your ego to a failure. How does it affect your brain when there is no reward at all? On the contrary, you do your best, wasting an unimaginable number of hours just to find out how many more things you don’t know. Lack of solid basics in this field can harm your efforts significantly. You lose your motivation and that is a natural consequence. Besides, if you are like me trying to learn new things without any context, you can be sure it won’t work. I can attest to it.
So what was the result? I was not making any good progress, sitting alone every single night, tired and frustrated. I was not able to apply any of the tutorial knowledge myself. While the training was on and the instructor was with me I could at least follow him, but it all ended when I logged off from Udemy. I could not apply anything that I just learned. Incredibly inefficient approach.
One super important lesson to share. Do everything to find your context & proper motivation and use it to learn. Whatever you do in your life, you can achieve everything by taking a small step every day. You have to be consistent and persistent. Until something hurts you badly, you will not have any motivation to overcome it.
I’m not a mathematician, I’m not a statistician, I’m not a data analyst, I’m not a data scientist(yet!). I discovered a pattern Goal — Context — Reward and I’m sure I will be able to use my knowledge in the days to come.
Thanks for reading!
