Story of Unleashing My Potential
Working hard for something we don’t care about is called stress; working hard for something we love is called passion.
Hello everyone! In this article I will talk about my journey to UP School, which has played the biggest role in shaping my career. I’m Sinem, I graduated from Industrial Engineering in July 2021. During my undergraduate education, I was interested in statistics, data mining, database management systems, SQL and Python Programming Language, which I came across from time to time due to lectures, but I was aiming for a career in the field of planning. Despite all this curiosity and interest, the reason why I did not feel confident in having a career in the field of data and tech was that I felt technically behind other people, already students and graduates of departments such as computer engineering, mathematics, statistics.
After my university graduation, I decided that there was no better time to delve into this issue and decide what I really want, rather than regretting the things I didn’t do later in my career. After days of research, reading and listening, I decided that doing a job in the data field will make me happy both now and in the long term.
After making a decision, all that remained was to prepare a roadmap and put it into practice. While I was in search of education during this process, I came across a post by an UP School graduate on LinkedIn by chance. This initiative, which I had not heard of before, caught my attention and while I was researching what it was, I saw the Data Analysis program in cooperation with Hepsiburada among the training courses open to application.
The announcement I saw was the last of the trainings that will take place in the form of 3 different training periods. For a few days, I researched UP School graduates about what they did in the past, where they are now and their opinions about UP School. After watching the videos on the UP School YouTube channel, I decided to apply for this training. There were still things I was afraid of because I thought that education would be competitive, just like in our school lives, and I would feel bad around people with more knowledge and experience in data field. But as it would cost me nothing to try, everything could turn out to be the opposite of my hesitation and fears. Indeed, that’s exactly what happened!
We were first asked to fill out an online form in the selection of the training. Here we were asked for some information such as our school, department, graduation year and why we want to attend this training. Afterwards, an English test consisting of 33 questions was sent to us and we were told that an 80-minute technical test would be sent immediately after this test if our English level was sufficient. The technical test consisted of 20 statistics and 6 programming questions. About 15 days after all these tests, I received an e-mail stating that I have been successful so far and that the next step is an interview with the UP School team. The interview was more like a conversation. After talking about ourselves, we explained our interest in this field and why we want to advance in the field of data. As a result of this phase being positive, a human resources interview was held with Hepsiburada. After the final stage was positive, a new and intense period started in my life when I received the acceptance mail.
Before the training, UP School 101 session was held, where we met with the UP School team and were informed about the UP School culture. In this meeting, the teaching of the courses, the tasks expected from us and the hard and soft skills to be gained were discussed.
The trainings were progressing in the form of video recordings for hard skill lessons 3 days a week over the moodle platform. On Tuesday evenings, we were meeting with our instructor with live-coding sessions and writing code to reinforce the topics covered that week. There were 4 tasks per week and we had 2 days to complete each one. During the training process, we learned about Python, SQL and machine learning in general.
On Wednesday and Friday evenings, there were office hours where we got together with our instructor and teaching assistants and asked our questions. In addition to the intensity of all these technical trainings, we had soft skill sessions that we called ‘Core Skills’ at regular intervals. I think these may be the most important and useful sessions that distinguish UP School from other education programs. In the core skills sessions, we were sharing our own thoughts on predetermined topics under the leadership of our guide and discussing what we can change and how we can integrate it into our lives.
Some of the soft skill trainings were time and energy management, feed-forward, positive challenge and resilience. It was very helpful for us to talk with our friends about these issues that we had not thought about before and were not aware of our shortcomings, which would actually improve us.
Discovering that we all share the same thoughts and feelings with each other, especially in the resilience session, which is at the point where the intensity of the training is at its peak, gave all of us an increase in motivation. Maybe we could have gained these competencies on our own, but without the support of people walking on the same path as us and the help of trainers, both the roadmap would be uncertain and the process would have been much longer. ‘Sisterhood’ was the key for us to rise together.
In a speech at the beginning of our education, it was mentioned that UP School is actually an initiative planned to serve as an intensified university education and to provide us with the necessary competencies to start our tech career. Although this made me say how intense it can be at first, I cannot remember a period in my life that was so intense and productive. We presented a capstone project with the technical competencies we acquired at the end of the training, so the UP School education is over, but the gains will always be with us.
We all had goals and dreams and we literally worked for 16 weeks to achieve them. By sacrificing some things in our lives, we made an effort to complete this training in the best way possible. If you are hesitant to apply for any of the UP School trainings or if you are already in the training process and about to give up, keep going on. As someone who has come to the end of the process, I can say that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to the UP School team, our valuable instructor Tuna Çakar and teaching assistants for this journey that made me experience the most challenging period of my life and helped me to unleash my potential.
If you have any questions or want to ask about my UP School journey, you can reach me here without hesitation.
