The first week of the data school was like a tornado however it was still filled with many awesome moments. So to any of you reading this thinking of joining the data school? This is what the first week feels like (I did read lots of first week/ day blog of others so hope it helps).
Monday: After a long journey of application and it finally came to the first day. Fortunately we could participate our first day in person (despite I am writing this blog at my home with the current covid situation, sad). Meeting all the fellow DS28 mates was such a delight and everyone was so friendly (no joke) and they would come up to introduce themselves, talk to you bit about themselves and what should we expect. Apart from all the laptop setup and company background knowledge introduction, we also had a chance to meet some data schoolers who are (were?) on placement and walked us through the journey they had during trainings. Overall the volume of information was substantial. I guess it makes sense as they are the Information Lab (ba dum tss). But all jokes aside it was a fruitful first day.
Tuesday - Wednesday: The training starts as of the second day, and it began with Alteryx, a data cleansing tool and also a software I had never used before. Learning something new always seems daunting in the first place and I was worried everything could be very overwhelming (*imposter syndrome intensifies*). But after taking on some hands on practices and asking so many questions (very dumb ones), it is amazing how we can learn about something new in such a quick pace. But I guess the data school provides such a great environment where we can learn and grow a lot. Despite how challenging it was in the first place, but the feeling of nailing a challenge/ practice with the skills you've just learned (or maybe you've stumbled upon some new function and tried them out and they turned out even better) is just great. I am very much looking forward to the possibilities after these trainings, hope I will remember to blog about them.
Thursday: Another data cleansing software was introduced to us (yes, another one), Tableau Prep coaching by our head coach Carl. Before I went into work that day I checked the schedule and saw we were to learn a new software I was worried that it will be another daunting task. However with the previous alteryx experience from Monday and Tuesday, and maybe some similarity shared between Tableau and Tableau Prep. It turned out to be quite a joyful yet fruitful day, as it helped a great deal towards the Friday challenge.
Friday: Project day! Yes, we have our first project challenge in our first week into the company. We were asked to add some new element into the one of the application vizzes using an additional data, use Alteryx or Tableau Prep to clean up those data and to try to visualise the new element we had. Not going to lie it was quite intense and I was super anxious. As we also had to present the workflow towards others (best part of the challenge), but I guess this was an excellent chance for us to experience some tight deadline we might face with real world clients and also earn some more experience in presentation. We had around 3 hours to improve on our viz with the new data, very luckily for me I found a supplementary data set very quickly so I could start my actual data cleansing and visualisation quick. However I got stuck very soon, I had trouble with replacing the data source with my new dataset with the supplementary data. After trying to solve the problem myself, I tried to look for help on the intranet-ish platform of DS, and you can't imagine how fast help can come. A colleague replied with a suggestion within like minutes I posted, and then I've learned that not only we are working with some of the people with the best tableau/ alteryx knowledge, but it is also okay to ask questions instead of cracking our heads and getting nowhere. People here are always willing to help as many as they could but they also want you to learn and understand at the same time. In the end the viz was no where near good as I could not finish it until last minute. But the biggest lesson I have learned is about the culture about this company, and I cannot wait for what would come next.
The first week was definitely a bit of a roller coaster ride. It was great fun but also daunting at some particular moment, for example: I couldn't help to think if I was that dumb to figure out a solution for some challenges we had during training (imposter syndrome just wouldn't let me go). But I guess it will be process we all go through. I am excited to see what comes next and hope to build up my skills even further in Tableau and Alteryx.