My first bachelors degree was in Statistics. Before I started the program, I imagined it being full of theoretical classes with countless proofs homework. However, the program was more focused on the practical aspect of Statistics which became the starting point of my interest in programming.
One of the first courses I had to take for the program was an Introduction to R Programming course. In the beginning, I was confused as why I had to take a programming course for Statistics. However, I soon learned that to apply Statistics to real-world work, we had to use programming.
The program prepared us to become data analysts and data scientists. It taught us practical skills such as data modeling, data visualization, and data cleaning. Our projects consisted of data science-related projects that used regression modeling, prediction analysis, and classification analysis. Although these projects didn’t require extensive programming like this post-bacc program, it required us to understand loops and basic programming algorithms. I really enjoyed using programming to apply statistics to real-world problems. One project I enjoyed doing was predicting crime rates for different neighborhoods based on different factors.
After college, I joined a mobile game company as a data analyst. My goal was to become a data scientist but breaking into that industry was difficult without a masters degree. Initially, I enjoyed the work at the company, especially because it related to games and who doesn’t like games? However, my work was primarily focused on the business side of the product. I created KPI reports and market trend reports which seemed interesting at first but soon got repetitive. That’s when I decided that I wanted pursue a career path that directly works with the product in a programming setting. That’s is the reason why I will soon finish this program and start my career as a software engineer after graduation.
