Hello, and welcome to my blog! This post will be about my background and what led me towards data science.
A decade ago, I graduated from the University of Virginia with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I focused mostly on perceptual research during my studies, so I am well versed in scientific methods and statistics. Due to external factors, I missed my opportunity to go to graduate school and instead started working at a restaurant. Since then I have worked my way through various restaurants in downtown Philly; but this year I decided it is time for a change. I started looking into changing careers into something more rewarding, both financially and intellectually. I considered what I would enjoy and also what I would be good at.
Ultimately I decided that I would do well in computer programming. As a lover of logic puzzles and games, figuring out how to reach a desired output with a very straight forward and logic driven ruleset seemed perfect for me. However, programming is broad and daunting to an outside observer with no training. I was overwhelmed with questions. What language do I start with? Will I need another 4 year degree? Even if I successfully got started, where would it ultimately take me? What if I can’t get a job after investing so much time and money into this? While investigating the various ways to get into programming and what I could do with it, I discovered data science. Creating code to instantly pour over volumes of data to perform statistical analysis and answer analytical questions intriqued me. Data science combines the logic that I enjoy learning with the statistics and scientific reasoning that I developed in my psychological research. A career in data science seems like a way to constantly learn and grow, while staying grounded in principles that I know and understand. This was definitely the field that I was looking for!
Now that I figured out what I wanted to do, all I had to do was find a program to help me. I decided on Flatiron because they offered answers to many of my questions above. I am eager to see where I go from here, and excited to share it with you! Thanks for reading!