With all the COVID19 situation like most of the people, I had to re-adapt my plans for 2020.

I had everything booked (including hotel and airplane tickets) to adventure myself in a Data Bootcamp in Singapore. It would have been also my first time in Asia and the whole package was quite exciting.

As the course and everything else had to be cancelled, I found myself with the question “What now?”.

I could not just “let it go” and “wait and see” after life was back to normal. The obvious alternative was to continue my learning and exploration online and I signed up for a program with focus in Python language.

I have done some online courses before but none on this length. The estimated effort informed is far off the reality if you really want to exercise aside. Not that time was key for my decision but as an IT/Finance person, measures are important to me and I had a certain expectation.

Getting started felt to me like being sent to a jungle. A lot of excitement on exploring the new, exposed to new ways to treat the data, a new programming language and making sense of all of it together. Then comes the moment, like pacing in a jungle, that I asked myself “How do I survive in this environment?”.

It can really be overwhelming. For me, especially when revisiting statistics concepts that I have seen in college and haven’t been using much since then. Another challenging piece for me has been Natural Language Processing (NLP).

To be fair, there has been also nice surprises, like when you finally find a waterfall after a long day walk in the jungle. I am very impressed to see how practical is to apply Machine Learning algorithms in Python.

At this point, my excitement is mixed with exhaustion but I am trying to follow my instincts to get to the next level and after having conquered some of this territory, I can just move forward.

Next to be explored: Neural Nets and Deep Learning. Sounds scary? Yes! I got to leave my cave and keep walking.

I’m convinced that is much more satisfying and invigorating to be facing this new endeavor by myself than just “wait and see”.