Lemons into Lemonade: My Personal Journey into Data Science
Published: 2020-09-03 23:40:34

Well, this sucks.

I mean, this *really* sucks.

After ten years of experience in the restaurant industry, my dream job was right in front of me. Three years into bartending at a restaurant in a large casino/resort, my manager wanted to make me the Wine Manager for the restaurant and give me full control of the wine program. I had the backing of the property Wine Director. I knew all of the executives by name. I'd already begun taking on the duties of a floor sommelier. We just needed business to pick up a little more...

You all can guess where this is going. COVID. I got my layoff papers yesterday. I'll be going in to work to clean out my locker this weekend.

But enough of the sob story! Let's talk less about abandoning the old dream, and more about the quest to find a new one.

I've always been reluctant to get into tech. Not that I didn't like it! I'd tinkered with HTML and CSS before. I'd interned as a Junior Sys Admin for a few months in the past. But I had a big name to live up to, and I didn't feel up to the task. My brother is... quite skilled at what he does in this industry. I was always afraid I'd be in his shadow.

There's been a lot of pride swallowing this year.

It was March of this year when I was furloughed due to COVID. Then and there, I knew my confidence in the restaurant industry was done. A change needed to be made. So I reached out to my brother for help. With my newly-found free time, I decided I'd finally enter the tech world. Where, when, and how were yet to be decided. He offered to help me get a Security+ certification and enter the industry that way. I'll probably try that again in the near future, but... that was some of the most boring material I've studied in my life. And I've studied soil types by wine region.

So, once again lacking direction, I turned to a friend of mine, Max. Max works as a Data Scientist (I had no idea what that meant. now I have *some* idea what that means). They showed me some basic level stuff and I became fascinated with the process of analyzing that much data. I spent some time with them learning the basics and studying Python in my free time. By now it was June and I wanted to get more serious about this. 

That's when I learned about programming boot camps. The idea sounded amazing, but I was worried about the legitimacy. My brother has hired many people in his line of work but never hired one from a boot camp. I thought that would be the end of the conversation, but he came back to me and recommended General Assembly. In asking trusted coworkers of his, he'd heard good things about several past grads. After that, I requested the syllabus for their Data Science Immersive, looked it over with Max, and started talking with a recruiter. I started the Data Science Immersive at the end of August.

I'm now a couple weeks in and... I like it! It's a lot though and I find myself switching between an almost inherent understanding of the material to feeling wildly out of my depth. It's like bartending a night where you don't expect any business and getting slammed out of nowhere.
 
So where to from here? I have no idea. 

I had my first call with a recruiter just before the immersive started and he asked where I wanted to go in this industry. Web Development? Did I want to learn Java? Did I have my heart set on Data Science? I had to be honest and tell him I was too new to the industry to have a good answer for those. 

I'm getting there though. Every day of this immersive, I get a better picture of what I like and what I don't. I get a better look at who and where I want to be. I haven't found the new dream yet, but for now, Data Science will do.