You need a Mentor
Find one early on in your career. Legends like Sachin Tendulkar and Pele, all had mentors. You need a mentor in every stage of your life. I’ve a few mentors as well, parents — we all know what value they bring to us, my first cousin is my mentor for all things finance, George Williams for data science and some others as well.
Mistakes most of us make
When I started, someone suggested me Andrew NG’s Machine Learning course. Without any background in stats, probability, and knowing limited calculus and linear algebra, I started that course. Intuitively understood everything but couldn’t figure out the math part. This was the reason I couldn’t complete assignments on my own. The only positive thing I did was not wasting my parents money for a certificate I didn’t deserve. Many of us do this and call ourselves prodigies.
How I got some direction?
Reading stories on Medium and other blogs gave me a some direction that to be a data scientist your math must be strong. So I started learning topics from here and there. I ended up learning a lot but without any direction on how much coding to learn, what topics to cover etc, I wasted a lot of time and effort. Sometimes I focused too much on deploying the model whereas I should have spent time improving it. I also used to showcase tutorial projects as my own. I realized my mistakes when I started interacting and making mentor-aspirant relationships. People like George Williams have a massive impact on my career. From foolish doubts to advice they have answered it all. I have to say my path to becoming a data scientist got clearer. With the right direction, I have understood what is data science and how to go about things. This is a field where you are always learning and growing, every new project presents a new challenge. So you must have a mentor.
