My journey through the Udacity Bertelsmann Data Science Challenge
My interest in applying for the Udacity Bertelsmann Data Science Challenge Scholarship came after I finished my Udacity Nanodegree in Digital Marketing.
It just came at the right moment when I realised it was very important to better understand what was behind all these metrics that digital marketers use to analyse their advertising efforts performance. I knew how Udacity worked from my previous Nanodegree. I was sure that the learning I was going to get from them was going to be invaluable, and even more if it was in partnership with a very well-known and established company as Bertelsmann.
As I wanted to improve my analytical skills for that purpose, I decided to apply for the challenge with the objective to aim for a Data Foundations Nanodegree Program, which I found the most suitable for my current knowledge and skills, and the one that I believe it will lay the foundations for my learning.
When I received the scholarship, it was really a great surprise for me! I honestly did not expect to be granted with it. The application form contained questions about your programming language skills, which I filled them in blank, though I was able to show some Excel and statistics knowledge due to my Master’s Degree dissertation project. Still, I was not sure it was enough. What I am sure is that my motivation, my willingness to learn and to be an active part of the community, reflected in my application and still present, were the fundamental key to be granted with the scholarship.
My journey through the Udacity Bertelsmann Data Science Challenge has been filled with great experiences, most of them, coming from the interaction with the rest of my classmates. That is by far the best part of this course, to be able to connect with and learn from people with very different backgrounds and cultures throughout the world thanks to technology.
One of the first social activities I attended was the Udacity Friends London meetup at Skills Matter in May, and there I met a lot of very nice and powerful people who have been a great company and a source of inspiration for me during the course.
I cannot help to mention @Elena Lestini, @Loretta, @Nelly, @Mohamed and @Kara de la Marck from the #London channel who attended regularly the consecutive study sessions of Udacity Friends of London at SkillsMatter and other events. Together, with other colleagues from London and Dublin, we created the amazing Team 39 (a.k.a. Keep_calm_Team39) for the Project Showcase Challenge.
The group was growing in size and expertise over time. @Elena was able to lead successfully a very big challenging group composed of ten people. Thanks to her kind leadership and all our teamwork, we became into a really organised and disciplined study group, always with a positive mind and amusing moments. We divided into three sub-groups of three/four people with funny names, Dragonflies, Ladybirds and Butterflies, and all of us had assigned tasks we chose. @Loretta was the one who took the initiative to lead the Butterflies subgroup, which I belonged to, and she did an astounding job too. It was a great satisfaction when we completed the project on time and we submitted much earlier than the deadline.
On a personal basis, there has been another important person who has influenced me a lot to find the motivation to study. I knew @MariJose some time ago before starting the course when we met in another Udacity event in Berlin, and I was glad to know that she was also granted with the challenge as I was not aware that she applied for it. She is one of the most positive and encouraging persons I know. We have maintained constant private conversations through Slack that they were really supportive.
After that, I was kindly invited by @helenn to participate in this amazing collaborative blog to read other students’ stories and contribute with mine, so I hope to help and discover.
I must confess the Statistics part of the course was more straightforward for me, as I reminded concepts from high school and more recently from the Research Methods subject at the university for my Master’s Degree. Nevertheless, I have been struggling with the optional part of SQL and Phyton as they were new for me.
I effectively completed the SQL part, and I find it really useful to work with databases. However, I am a bit stuck with the programming language Phyton because I am not actually a software developer. In my case, I am more interested in the data analysis part that is applied to Business and Marketing.
I do not know if I will get the scholarship because, though I took part in activities, most of them were offline and I have not participated in the Slack and forums as much as I wanted. And even if I get the scholarship, I cannot be sure that I will receive the Nanodegree in which I am interested because it does not depend on me. All I know is that this exciting journey has helped me to meet wonderful people and I learnt very interesting concepts and programs, and I am truly satisfied.
