No Money or Job Offers: My Unusual Path to Data Science

Opening your own doors

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

If you’ve been reading my work long enough, you’ll know that I didn’t break into Data Science directly.

I took the scenic route (aka started as a Data Analyst).

But something you definitely won’t know — because I’ve never shared this story before

Is that I didn’t even break directly into Data Analytics right after University

This is the story of how I turned a non-technical job into a career in Data Science, along with key lessons that have stayed with me over the years, helping me advance my career and create new opportunities in my life.

Chapter 1: No Money or Job Offers

I didn’t attend my graduation ceremony.

For me, closure came after going into my LinkedIn profile and adding another job to my list of experience.

Landing a “Machine Learning Engineer” internship right before graduation meant everything to me. It was the first sign that after 5 arduous years in school, my degree — which I never picked up — was actually worth something.

The only problem though…It didn’t pay my bills