Before I jump into my virtual learning journey, I want to take a step back and talk about how I got here. The truth is, I feel like so far, my life has been stuck in a loop of learning curves. I started my college education not knowing what I was interested in and stumbled into materials science engineering. In the process of completing my bachelor’s degree, I pivoted into product design. I took a year off to study it in Hong Kong before returning to complete my engineering degree. I then went full creative and got into fashion photography and jewelry design. But then, after a couple of years, the analytical side of my brain was feeling like it was not getting enough attention, so I went back to graduate school and earned a master’s in applied mathematics. That was one of the steepest learning curves I had faced to date. I had completely forgotten how to “school” and everything I learned from undergrad had utterly escaped me. I somehow managed to survive with an above-average GPA, but I was back to square one in terms of what next after graduation. My major was a lot more theoretical than I would like, and without any coding knowledge, the application was quite limited in the real world. I have been trying to avoid code my whole life for reasons I can’t quite pinpoint myself. But I eventually realized it was code or starting over. So that is when I decided to get into data science.
Virtual learning — An introvert’s journey into data science
Thanks to Covid19, flatiron Bootcamp now only offers the virtual program. I was slightly apprehensive about virtual learning at first since I usually prefer in-person interactions. I thought it would be much more engaging in person, but I was pleasantly surprised. I was never the one to feel comfortable speaking amongst a sizable group of strangers. I am now starting the third week of the program, but there was never a moment where I felt uneasy. I feel like the virtual setting makes speaking in front of a group a lot less intimidating. Instead of shouting from the back of the room or awkwardly waiting for the instructor to notice you raising your hand, zoom offers virtual tools to do so. Since the instructor is already looking at the screen, they can quickly see and address the question. The lecture almost feels like a one-on-one tutoring session. It made everything feels a lot more personable in an anti-intuitive way. I now have no qualms about asking questions in the middle of the lecture or just reaching out to instructors when I need help troubleshooting, which has benefited my learning process.
According to the Myers-Briggs Company, 56.8%*1 of the people who have taken their test globally tend towards introversion. So if more than half of the world’s population tends towards introversion, it begs why our schools are set up for those who are more comfortable in an extrovert-first environment. Have an option for a virtual learning environment, I believe, will significantly help those who learn in a more private way to succeed in education while making connections with their fellow students in a way that suits them. But I digress.
It is now toward the end of the first phase of the program, and the last task is to complete a group project to assess and apply everything we have learned so far. A group project for coding makes sense to be virtual where teammates can check-in and out through zoom without all the distractions you usually get whenever you work with people in person. This alleviated a lot of the stress from just absorbing the course materials. When I was in engineering school, I often would have to move to less noisy areas of campus or even shift tables at the library when people started talking too loudly. Having my own space with access to my team members whenever I need them was a breath of fresh air.
Another aspect of this virtual learning environment I have enjoyed so far is the lack of commute. It has allowed me to focus on learning and less on getting to school, what to get for lunch, or how many snacks I need to bring to feed my brain. What it has led to is an increased speed and capacity for learning.
So far, we sped through python and drilled in pandas, and had an overview on SQL(Structured Query Language), API(Application Programming Interface), HTML( HyperText Markup Language) for web scrapping purpose. However, the least straightforward topic was actually on git, which is crucial for any project collaboration. I didn’t have any previous coding experience and comprehending how computer functions linking local drive to virtual using version control made me feel like a monkey learning how to speak the human language. I was the source of the first merge conflict for my group, and my poor teammates had to walk me through all the steps to resolve the conflict, all because I forgot to pull the current update from GitHub to my local drive before I started editing my code. But once I was familiar with the process, I was blown away by all the inter-working parts and logic behind all the technology we take for granted.
I can say after just three weeks, I am comfortable reading and writing code, creating functions, and making beautiful plots using seaborn and matplotlib with given data to do all the basic and initial cleaning and analysis. You can see some examples of what I’ve been able to create so far below.
Aside from the knowledge I have gained during these last few weeks, I have a newfound appreciation for learning in a different way than I have known before. When I was getting my bachelor’s and even my master’s, I often would learn best on my own from books or lecture notes after the lecture had been given. Correlating that information with the comfort I now feel in this virtual environment, I understand that it combines the best of both worlds. With virtual learning, I can focus on learning material at my own pace and on my own time while also connecting with my fellow students and collaborating to achieve a common goal. I can say virtual learning lessens the learning curve of coding. I am excited to further my knowledge in the world of data science.
*1 https://www.themyersbriggs.com/en-US/Connect-with-us/Blog/2020/January/World-Introvert-Day-2020
