Skeptical, yet hopeful. Those were the emotions I've felt when I first attended the meet-and-greet back at March of this year. The moment I gazed upon the tall Manhattan building to attend the panel, my first thought was, how daunting it felt. Going through the reception and finally up the elevator, I was first overwhelmed by the sight of such a simplistic and clean office space I often see in videos of modern areas such as Facebook or Google tours. I assumed that this was simply a rental place during the panel and that the actual place was an underwhelming office space. Oh how wrong I was. When I was told that this would be the actual working place if we were to be selected, I felt unqualified. I've been working in places that had such a gloomy atmosphere, with dark colors or old fashioned aesthetics. It felt foreign, it felt like I was in the wrong place and the panel hasn't even started.
When it did start, we were given a slideshow depicting on how The Data School works, how The Data School was originally from the UK and they were just starting to branch into the US. They spoke about Tableau and Alteryx, stuff that I have never even heard of - saying it involved manipulating data. With no hope to make sense of what they were saying on how the programs works, I was dumbfounded. However, I was still hopeful that I could learn it properly if I do get accepted. Then there was the bombshell drop. They stated that they were only admitting eight people every four months. When I heard that, I lost all confidence. I looked around to see how many people were there, much more than eight people, my competition, as well as potential peers. Although, they stated that experience wasn't required, I was sure that people who had experience with computer science and data analysis were going to get picked first. It didn't even help that, as I stated before, it was their first class in New York. New York does not have less than 8 people. There could be hundreds, maybe thousands of applicants, all probably having way more experience than me. I had no confidence, no way I can compete against that many people, let alone 8 others.
As soon as the slideshow concluded, they started to show a demonstration of Tableau and would break up into groups to simulate how to create a dashboard in Tableau. Having being shown, I was speechless. I was stunned to see how simple making a dashboard was. The requirements for getting in The Data School was simple; find a dataset, create a dashboard using that dataset, and submit it to their website. It felt so simple, so I gained some confidence back, though it would've been tough going against potentially so much people. So after the panel, I had some, but fleeting hope to get in. So, Instead of stressing myself out trying to figure out Tableau using the info I've gotten from literally one simple demonstration, I've decided to forgo the first cohort in June and try to gain experience and apply for the second cohort for October.