My Data Science Journey: The Prequel
Recently, I made the decision to begin dedicating a good portion of my free time to learning more about analyzing data so that I can pivot my career in a different direction. (Yes, I’m a wife, mother of tinies, and proud owner of a full-time job who still has what I consider to be a fair amount of “free time” – more on that in another post.) To understand how I’m going about this, it’s best that I explain what my background is and how this all came about.
The Musical Years
I’ve been making music since I was 5, and although I enjoyed math and science in school, I also found success as a trumpet player. In 2003 I graduated with a degree in Music Education from Texas Tech University. I spent the rest of that year and much of the next living in England selling sheet music at a little shop, and when I returned landed a fantastic middle school band director job in McKinney, Texas. I taught for 3 years and performed with local wind ensembles the Metropolitan Winds and the Lone Star Wind Orchestra before shipping out to join the Navy as a musician at the beginning of 2008.
“In the Navy…”
I joined the Navy – I saw the world. Well, much of Southeast Asia, at least. I had two children and worked my way through the ranks. As I gained more experience, I was put in charge of managing an extra duty. I ran the public affairs office for Navy Band Northeast in Newport Rhode Island. By my 7th year in I was starting to feel the strain of being a mother in the military. I enjoyed all of the new stuff I was learning like social media management, Photoshop, and photography, and I wanted to broaden my horizons.
You see, when you’re in the military, you’re often so limited that you feel like you can’t work anywhere else. And that’s really the way it is if you don’t make an effort to supplement your own professional development. Even though the Navy keeps transcripts of all the “courses” you complete and you even get some college credits for boot camp, these often go unrecognized in civilian life. I knew that outside of the military, I was not marketable, and I wanted to fix that.
My Escape Plan
Over the next few months, I came up with a plan. I wanted to be able to leave within 3 years if I wanted to. Now at this point, I could have learned what I needed to without getting a degree. YouTube University is an amazing place to learn about digital marketing. However, I knew it would take a lot of discipline for me to gain the knowledge I needed while working full time with a toddler and a baby. I could get a Masters degree at no cost through the Navy’s Tuition Assistance program and my G.I. Bill, so that’s what I decided to do.
After researching a lot of programs, I decided to apply for the Master’s of Science in Information Technology degree at Florida State University. I chose this school because:
- It’s one of the oldest information schools and online programs in the country
- The coursework is the same online as it is on campus
- The classes met live online every week
Who wants to just by a McDegree? I didn’t. But my heart sank when I read the application requirements. Twelve hours of technology courses or 2 hours of work experience. Before quitting the application process, I emailed the admissions office to ask if I could count some things I’d done as work experience. Namely:
- As a teacher, I used HTML and Dreamweaver to develop the band’s website
- I was familiar with WordPress and had a blog at one point
- I had developed digital media and managed social media accounts in the Navy
Someone got back to me and said that would be acceptable. The next hurdle was cramming for the GRE. I bought a couple of books (pretty sure one of them was called “Cramming for the GRE”) and prepared to take my first standardized test in a good 15 years. There had been no math class in my life since I was 16. In college, I clepped out of everything that was required.
I did fine, got accepted, and in January of 2016 I started my coursework. It was a bit of an adjustment and there were obvious gaps in knowledge. I didn’t know what Google Docs was, but it quickly became my friend as I had a group project to collaborate on almost every semester. I finished my degree in 2 years while my children slept. It was not easy.
As the end of my next Navy enlistment approached I had a decision to make. I was finishing up that last year of school, and if I wanted, I could get out of the Navy right after I graduated and go to the civilian workforce. After a lot of hemming and hawing, and a surprise promotion, I decided to go forward with that plan.
Back to Civilian Life
During my last years in the Navy, I had continued to manage public affairs duties which involved community relations, journalism, and digital production and engagement. For my very first gig afterward, I was a part-time social media manager. As the end of that contract approached, I took a job as a marketing apprentice contracting for another company and my hourly rate doubled.
For that assignment, I was thrust into the world of digital marketing full on. Although I’m not an expert I learned SEO, strengthened my WordPress skills, learned how marketing automation works, developed campaigns, designed landing pages, and marketing material, and most importantly, tracked all of the leads we got for my project to see where they were coming from and analyze the best way to increase sales.
This is when I started really learning about Excel and the power of pivot tables. The CEO taught me how to visualize data in a way that was clear and complete, and I greatly appreciate his insistence that the data be complete and flawlessly presented. There were times though when I brought everything I thought we needed to a meeting and he’d ask for a metric he hadn’t prepared. Ugh. There was always something.
That’s when I started being more interested in how I could get the answers faster. Knowing what I’ve begun to learn, if I’d had my data ready in a Jupyter notebook I could have answered just about any question on the spot. Also, I loved poring over and analyzing it. Wondering how much of it was flawed, imagining better tools and ways to collect it in the first place – it was fun.
I have since moved on to another job where I have to make recommendations based on marketing data, and I’ve decided that I want my next job title to be Data Analyst. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s been great learning everything there is to know, but I’m under no delusion that I can be an awesome writer, designer, photographer, search engine optimizer, UI/UX expert, etc. all at once. I do want to specialize and I’m excited about the opportunities that a career in data science can bring.
Moving Forward
As I start my upcoming projects, I’ll be posting to share exactly what I did to complete my career pivot and start a journey toward something bigger. I did want to give some background because I don’t want anyone who has never written code before to think I’m starting from scratch. If you want to follow along, there may be some extra studying to do, but if you’re like me, you’re in the right place.
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