September 2023, this is the month where I officially started my computer science major. In that period, AI, machine learning, and many similar terms were trendy, and everybody was talking about them, and 90% of the replies I received when I told people that I am going to study computer sciecne was "So you will build ChatGPT, huh?", and as a typical stubborn person, I always rolled my eyes at this question, and think inside my head "Never, everybody talks about AI, I don't want it!"
My first heartbreak
And I started my studies, very excited to start in a world full of semicolons and semantic errors, my freshman year wasn't this much though, I was just following the university courses, thinking that I will decide my future with computer science on the go, and that what I learn in university is already enough.
I remember that the very first course I took in college was a Python course, something simple that teaches things such as print statement, functions, loops, conditionals, and so on, but by the end of that course, I said to myself "Now that I know all this Python, I should build a project", so I went to my bestfriend aka chatgpt and asked it to suggest a project that I can start with, well, every project it named was just something I don't know how to build, so I was like "Screw chatgpt" and I googled this "How to build Youtube using Python?" but Google disappointed me too, and I thought to myself "Uh, so I can't build something with print statement and an if-else clause?!!"
Depressed, I kept following the courses, and didn't even dare to try and read anything about computer science. And then, sophomore year started, and I was just lost there, I didn't feel like I am capable of anything, and I decided I want to build a website, so I started with frontend webdev, and I loved it, my first webpage was basically a stack of sentences, some in H1, some in H2, and so on, and I was very confident that this is my career path and what fate chose for me.
Not my thing
By time, there was something not so interesting about frontend webdev, well, it's so "visual", and I somehow discovered that this is not what I want, so I asked my besty aka chatgpt again, and it told me to try backend.
As someone that knows Python, Django was the first thing I tried, and all I can say about Django is that it tortured me, so I blamed Django and said that it is the problem, and then I moved to PHP, and with many hours with BroCode's PHP tutorial, I realized I am the problem. (BroCode if you read this your PHP tutorial is super amazing, and your tutorials always saved my life <3)
More months of depression, feeling hopeless in life, and then I went very desperatrly to chatgpt, just looking for any CS related thing that I might enjoy, anything at all, chatgpt suggested Machine learning, and I said "NOOOOOO NOT THIS!".
The video that changed my life
I colsed chatgpt, and scrolled youtube a bit, and then, one youtube video catched my attention, this video:
Python for Data Analytics by Luke Barousse (the least I can say about this man is that he is a legend), when I saw it, I was wondering what data analytics really is, and I clicked on the video (thankfully I did), finding that it teaches from the very basics of Python, to a full Portfolio project for data analytics and it felt like all the secrets of the universe were revealed to me then.
"Wow, where were I all this time, I am loving this!" I thought to myself, all of the data, the visualizations, the fact that we can answer questions using data, I was in heaven!
After finishing the course, and reinforcing my knowledge with some Kaggle courses (With free certificates ofc!), I was finally able to make to build what I actually enjoyed, data analytics projects that felt more like having fun than coding to me, especially the Netflix userbase analytics project, one that I more than enjoyed.
ML again?
And with this happiness, and after sharing it with chatgpt, I realized something, "Oh oh, this can take me to ML?!"
That was shocking, it really was, I've always ran away from ML and somehow I found myself approaching it, "Do I proceed?" I asked myself, and at that point, I was very excited, and more than ready, I started simply and slowly, I was afraid of this field, thinking it is only for "Gifted" people (I was actually born gifted, but I was never confident about my capabilities in computer science lol), so I decided to go for intro to machine learning course by Kaggle.
And slowly, I was intorduced to scikit-learn, this is why I followed this legendary course:
And with that, my portfolio started populating, my knowledge started growing, and I didn't go to ML, it came to me, by itself...
My future plans
Right now, I can't say that I am the best AI/ML engineer in the world, but I can't say I am the worst, I am simply someone that succeeded in her journey, and that was finally able to know what she really wants, and what she wants to focus on, and I am planning to work on Microsoft AI & ML engineering professional certificate in Coursera, and I believe it will be more than helpful to make me grasp more concepts and gain more knowledge!
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