My Journey

Winding up in a data science career is both expected and a surprise to me. Let me explain.

During grammar school and high school, I was always good at math, scoring well in the most advaced courses offered, participating in Mathletes, and quickly picking up what little coding I was exposed to. When I learned HTML (in the 1990s), I was found it so fascinating that a few lines of code could allow me to communicate with seemingly the entire world. I hoped to have a career as a Webmaster.

I started college with plans to major in Computer Science. I found my first class extremely challenging and wound up very intimidated and unsure if this was the right career path for me. I decided that I wanted a more glamorous career.

I switched my major to Communication with the hope of working in Public Relations. But as I learned quickly after graduation, most jobs in PR are in pretty unglamorous industries. I also realized I didn’t enjoy the work that was typical for a role in PR or marketing communication.

However, I had no idea what else to do. I took some classes in the hopes of figuring out a better career path. First graphic design, but had similar feelings as I did with marketing/PR. I considered a career in engineering, and took Calculus, refreshing what I learned in college. I thoroughly enjoyed studying math again, but wasn’t sure I wanted to quit my full-time job and start over from square one with a second bachelors in civil engingeering. Data Science was not yet on my radar as it had not yet been named the “sexiest career of the 21st Century.” I didn’t come into contact with any analysts or statisticians at work, so those didn’t register as a career option.

Eventually, I transitioned to digital marketing, and with that came some data analysis, mostly web and social media data. I loved being able to “do math” at work. I learned as much as I could on the job so that I could get the most insight out of what little data was available. That was recognized, and eventually, during a team reorganization, I was moved into a role focused 100% on marketing analytics.

Luckily, I was working under someone with experience in that area, who exposed me to what I didn’t know about the world of analytics, statistics, and programs like R and Power BI. Learning R reminded me that I liked writing code and that a few lines of code could be so powerful.

I was fascinated with everything about analytics and I wanted to learn more. I was much more excited by this type of work than I ever was about PR or marketing.

Eventually, I realized if I wanted to move up in the area of analytics, I had a lot of skill gaps to cover. A liberal arts degree focused on Communication does not prepare you for quantitative analysis. To that end, I enrolled in a Master of Science in Data Science program, while continuing to work full-time.

So, in the end, despite my best efforts, I still ended up in a career that combined my math skills and interest in coding. The upside of my detour into communication, public relations, and marketing is that I was able to significantly improve my communication skills, which probably would not have happened had I followed my original path starting with Computer Science.