A Tectonic Shift

Sometimes life throws you a curveball, other times you are the pitcher and the curve is up to you. Recently, I made the grandiose decision to stop working dead end 9–5’s, drop everything, and commit to an immersive Data Science bootcamp. I enrolled in General Assembly’s Data Science Immersive course and am currently two weeks in. I will not say it is easy, learning a new language never is. However, they say the best way to learn something so different to your normal operations requires immersion to really get a handle on it.

I have a background in math and science, having started as an Astronomy major at San Francisco State University and eventually switching and graduating with Environmental Sciences. While I do have a lifetime love of Astronomy, I realized that working in a lab was not my ideal career. Rather, I would prefer to have a satisfying stable career somewhere else and buy a high quality telescope myself someday. However, I similarly realized, that while working in the field of the oldest history we know, e.g. geology, is satisfying and fascinating, my true love is numbers. While studying in university, I recall that the most satisfying example of solving a problem is the rush that exists when you work with a difficult problem such as math or science and can produce the expected result; or even better, find a fascinating new result. As such, I realized the combination of working with numbers and the satisfaction of writing increasingly complex python code could produce the thrill that keeps me going and creates a career that I can enjoy continuously.

Furthermore, the idea of working with the data of large companies sounds incredible. I cannot imagine a more enjoyable profession than working with some of the data provided by said companies. I would never compromise my professional integrity, yet, can easily imagine the gratuitous satisfaction of seeing the way the general population uses some of these large-scale services.

It has been a constant struggle of mine for at least the past decade to decide what I can do that will keep me happy for time to come. Recently, I realized that Data Science is the golden ticket. Not because of salary potential, not because of the potential demand in the field, and not even because tech-based jobs are certifiably the way of the future; it is simply because it is something I know I will love and can wake up happy to perform on a daily basis. No more dead end jobs. No more wondering “what if”. Just satisfaction. Satisfaction, and something I can look back on and smile.