DEV Community: Ethan

What I Learned This Week. Week 17.

Ethan — Mon, 20 Jun 2022 16:49:50 +0000

Welcome back to another week. I am actually writing this the following Monday. Over the weekend I fell short on pretty much all my responsibilities. If I had a job I would have taken a mental health week. However, I have a hard time not hating myself when I don't accomplish things throughout the week. So I tried to do a half load or so, and I just felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of intrusive thoughts that I have to combat. Telling me I am lazy, useless, dumb, will never get a job, etc. On a daily basis, I usually deal with it sporadically, but needing to combat my mean thoughts with self love and encouragement is exhausting. Oh and just incase you couldn't figure it out from the tone of how I am writing. I wasn't selected for the project phase of the Twitch apprenticeship. I fully believe that if given the chance, I would have rocked the project and been chosen for the job. But alas I did not get picked. I made it to the top 1.3%. This was no easy feat and I should be proud of myself for making it that far. The work I put into it gave me many opportunities to learn that have already been shown to be important. I learned how to correctly use a temporary table in SQL and even got a chance to apply it in a real life situation. Ever since I got rejected I was able to dive into my new projects where I get to showcase my skills. One of which I haven't had a chance to practice with, which is creating data pipelines. For my new project, I am using the League of Legends API to source my own dataset. In order to have the data be actionable, I need to preprocess every row I insert and set up a script to source the data itself. Doing this is definitely more fun compared to learning new SQL techniques, so I am excited to have a change of pace. All I need to do is keep up on my personal responsibilities and continue love myself.

What I Learned This Week. Week 16.

Ethan — Mon, 13 Jun 2022 17:53:19 +0000

So I want to start this off with addressing that I didn't post last week. Like I said in the past these have been becoming routine and feeling disingenuous and I wanted that to change. So instead I am writing this over the weekend. Last weekend I started using a new app to keep track of everything. It's called Notion. It is extremely customizable and felt like a breathe of fresh air. In it I have a daily entry where I talk about my intentions, happenings, what I am grateful for and my action items. So I journal everyday using those now. And I come here to just talk. So don't expect it to be extremely coherent, but it will be honest, and real. I do want to touch on my interview last week Monday, it went very well. I do feel as if I could have answered for longer. I always seem to end early. I pride my self at being able to be clear and concise but sometimes I get nervous and am unable to elaborate on my ideas. I did answer all the questions correctly and well, but wish I would have said more. I haven't heard from them now and it has been a couple weeks. But the next step doesn't start for 6 days so I feel like no news is good news. This past week was a bit slower and more routine. Using my new tracker I was able to record what happened everyday and love the fact that I can go back and see where my strengths are, and my weaknesses. I noticed the trend that I fall short on my nightly stuff a lot more than my morning stuff. I started a couple new for fun projects as well. One of them is an exploratory analysis of League of Legends games. I have been playing for over 10 years now and love the idea of deep diving into how to win more often. I also am starting a new NLP project with my friend from Harvard. Right now our plan is to take millions of Amazon reviews and perform sentiment analysis. But we are having issues getting access to the data set. So if we need to use a smaller dataset it shouldn't be an issue. The important part is getting a proof of concept and showing that we can do complex analysis on complicated datasets. Anyways, my train of thought has officially entered the station and I think it is time to call it. I hope you enjoyed my much less structured take on my week. It's different, but it feels like more me.

What I Learned This Week. Week 14.

Ethan — Sun, 29 May 2022 21:30:51 +0000

Monday

Today was great. I am starting at the beginning of the week again, which I am very happy about. I am thinking I need to be more honest with myself and therefore with what I write here. Giving myself the grace and time to make mistakes. Because I will learn much faster if I allow myself to make mistakes. And that includes talking about things that I might think isn't important. Cause chances are, it is going to be most important. Now I have been struggling with my Spanish lately. Not in the sense of it being hard, but that I don't bring myself to spend near as much time on it. Duolingo pissed me off with one too many things and I lost interest. I still have the want to keep my daily streak but I don't do much else besides that. I am hoping the want comes back around but we shall see. My practice problems on the other hand has taken a different turn. I had been using Leetcode for the longest time but ran out of free lessons to go through and now just do the daily problem about 5 times a week. Instead I have been using HackerRank and upgrading my knowledge more on SQL. Most of my experience is with programing languages like Python but as a Data Scientist, it's is important for me to know how to use SQL too. And not just at a beginners level.

Tuesday

Today was great. I heard from Twitch last night and have an interview scheduled for tomorrow already. In the Q&A that I went to they said to not expect a response for at lease a week but I got in right away. Makes me feel a little special honestly. I fully believe that it is because I took so much time on my essay and learning everything for the assessment. I feel as if I deserve this opportunity and will continue to put in the hard work to make it happen. Not much else on my mind today as I am just pumped.

Wednesday

Today was another amazing day. After a solid morning and having a great talk with my mom, I got straight to work. I had no idea what I was walking into, whether its just to talk to me to find out my personality, or a technical assessment. I did lots of research into what Data Scientists do at Twitch to ready for anything. It ended up being more geared toward how I communicate and how comfortable I am being on the spot. My interviewer gave me amazing feedback and told me that they believed I would be a great fit. That doesn't mean I get the job but it is one huge step closer to getting an offer. My next steps is having a technical interview more geared towards my knowledge of Data Science as a whole. For review I plan on watching one of my favorite Youtube channels, Statquest!

Thursday

Today was alright. I haven't heard from Twitch yet but honestly don't expect anything until next week. I reached out to an old acquaintance regarding a different interview that I haven't heard back about. He works at the company and actually got interviewed by the same contact that I have been talking to. I found a great way using multiple job boards to be able to speed apply to a bunch of great jobs that I am qualified for. I also had a meeting with my career coach which went well.

Friday

Today was great. I ended up hearing from Twitch right away in the morning. It came with great news and I will be interviewing on Monday. They sent a dataset and business problem that I will need to make myself comfortable with and be able to talk through my thought process. With is being a holiday weekend and already putting in good work, I took most of Friday to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather.

Thank you for reading my take on what I did this week. I always enjoy ending my day with a recap. It helps me stay on task and not feel as if I am just going through the motions. I hope to see you again next week.

What I Learned This Week. Week 13.

Ethan — Mon, 23 May 2022 14:28:56 +0000

Wednesday

Today was good. I know, we are starting at Wednesday again. I fell behind at the end of last week and I spent Monday and Tuesday catching up. And Instead of going ahead and blogging about Monday and Tuesday today, I decided to give myself a bit of a break. I have been very busy, I had an interview yesterday. Which after putting hours of research into the company, I had the door slammed in my face because I didn't quite have enough college credits to qualify. Which is understandable, but I would have preferred to know that I can't be considered before the interview process. I mean most companies would just auto-deny. I also have been going through Twitches pre training program, which has been frustrating at times (probability can be a pain without practice), but is still enjoyable. I am mostly excited to be able to take the assessment. I believe I will blow it out of the water and all I have to do is write a compelling 500 word essay on why I should have the opportunity.

Thursday

Today went wonderfully. I spent most of my time going through Twitches pre training program. I skimmed through the machine learning portion, as that is what I have been working on for a year and a half. I took some time going through the SQL portion, making sure that I understood every concept by skipping through to the quizzes. I didn't get all the way through it but plan on continuing my work tomorrow. I am hoping to get it done and be able to take the assessment tomorrow. I had a meeting with my career coach again as per usual on Thursday. She is very optimistic about my current opportunities which helps me and boosts my ego. I also have a meeting with my friend from Harvard tonight, and last time it ended up going over an hour past what was expected, so I know it will be another great conversation tonight.

Friday

Today went pretty good. The conversation with my friend went wonderfully last night. We ended up talking for 3 hours about so many things. From which machine learning model to use to the sustainability of Tokyo. I again spent most of my time going through the training program. I ended up spending a lot of time with the rest of the SQL portion because there were new concepts and I wanted to make sure I understood everything. As I said yesterday I was hoping to take the assessment today, but after spending so long learning new concepts my brain was a little fried. I decided to put off the assessment for tomorrow to be at my best.

This week went well, but was very busy. I had continued to keep up with my weekly tasks and threw my assessments on top of it. But I got it all done, I finished up on Saturday and handed in the assessment with plenty of time to spare. Now is the waiting game, I know to stay consistent and continue to learn every day. As always I hope you enjoyed following along with my week. Although it was a bit shorter, I feel as if I was more honest with myself through it.

What I Learned This Week. Week 12.

Ethan — Tue, 17 May 2022 18:09:08 +0000

Monday

Today was good. Here we are at another week and it started off great. I piggy-backed off of an amazing weekend and got a ton done today. I did in fact hold my position for Duolingo that I mentioned last Friday. I did great on my practice problems and started working more on my MySQL skills. I did have some issues with the career services team that I decided wasn't worth my worry. They tried to get me to accept a job paying less than 17/hr as a Data Scientist. Which for some people, that would be more than enough. But if you are also a Data Scientist or Software Engineer, you know that that would be highway robbery and I would not be valued the way I should be.

Tuesday

Today was great. I woke up feeling extra rested and ready to go. The medicine that I got from the Dermatologist last week is doing wonders, so my self confidence is rising. I got a possible interview last night. I have to complete an assessment yet, but I know that I have the ability so I am excited to interview again. I have been slacking a little bit on my extra activities. I have been meaning to set up a notebook for NLP learning for my friend so that they can apply it their dataset. But I have been so busy with Mothers day and applying for jobs that I put it on the back burner. Hopefully by Thursday it will be done.

Wednesday

Today was another great day. I drove my girlfriend to an appointment this morning. It ended up taking longer than expected and I was able to get lots of experience on Duolingo. I went from 24th to 6th out of 30 other people. I received an invitation to apply to one of Twitch's apprenticeship programs, which as a huge video game buff, this was extremely exciting. They have a training plan to go through prior to taking their assessment so I know what I will be doing tomorrow. Hopefully I will be able to squeeze in setting up the NLP notebook but life happens and I will get to it when I can.

Thursday

Today was another amazing day. I went through a good amount of Twitches training. So far everything is review except for a new technology that they have a course on. Even if I don't get accepted into the program, all of this learning is a great experience. I had a meeting with my career coach today and gained some great insight from her. I am very happy with the progress I have made in both technical skills and communication. Especially after having a background in customer service, I always thought of myself as a great communicator. But I have always had issues "selling" myself to a interviewer.

Friday

Today was wonderful. After such a great week, I took today a bit slower. I made sure I had everything taken care of by doing my practice problem and my Spanish. I checked emails every once in a while but otherwise I spent the day outdoors with my girlfriend. We drank margaritas and played a bunch of lawn games.

I ended up finishing this next week after I didn't blog at all Friday. I also was busy all day Saturday as I went to Holland, Michigan's Tulip Time Festival. I am a third generation immigrant from the Netherlands so it was wonderful to see my culture and what my Opa and Oma grew up with. It was my first time seeing the parade and going on the main festival day.

What I learned This Week. Week 11.

Ethan — Sun, 08 May 2022 23:40:42 +0000

Monday

Today was a great day. After the long weekend I had been getting to bed pretty early so I woke up early today too. I got to shave for the first time with a nice razor that my girlfriends parents got me as a gift for helping so much. I personally got "The Leaf" and I have always wanted to use a razor like that. I did my practice problems for the first time since Thursday and did wonderfully. And I hoped right back into my Spanish. I took the time to figure out the business problem for my wine quality data set and set a plan of action. Before I was just having fun doing exploratory analysis and learning new skills, but I want to be able to showcase this project in my portfolio and resume. Using this it will show that I am skilled at solving business problems using data.

Tuesday

Today was great. I slept in today. When it is gloomy out and there isn't sunlight pouring into my room, I tend to sleep longer and stay tired into the morning. I did however have a wonderful start to my day and got my problems and Spanish done quickly. I have been doing a study course with leetcode and am now finished with it. I have been doing the daily problem still but am thinking that I should do some HackerRank lessons as well. I also applied to a few jobs which hopefully will turn out good.

Wednesday

Today was wonderful. I woke up to a beautiful day. The sun was shining, birds chirping, it reminded me of waking up as a kid. I cruised through my practice problems. I even tested out of 5 lessons for my Spanish. After running some errands around lunch I hopped into the wine quality data set I have been working with. I set up a few helper methods and ended up applying a strategy that I learned from my practice problems to help. These helper methods checked any given classifier's hyperparameter with a single call.

Thursday

Today was alright. Nothing to complain about but I guess today just wasn't great. Todays daily problem was extremely easy and I didn't even need to think about it. Which for some might be seen as a good thing, but I like to be challenged for these. I much prefer to give up and look up a solution to figure it out step by step than figure it out in less than a minute. My Spanish was fun. I am remembering more and more from my high-school Spanish classes and it makes me wish I applied myself in the same way back then. I do have a meeting with my friend from Harvard tonight which I am looking forward to.

Friday

Today was great. The meeting with my friend went wonderfully last night. My dad and I figured out exactly what we are doing for mothers day. I had a great practice problem that was a lot of fun. I did more Spanish in one day than ever before. There are lingots in Duolingo and you get a bunch if you finish top 3 in your league. So I grinded that out for over an hour to try and get more lingots. Currently in second and will hopefully hold my position by Sunday.

This week went by so fast. All of a sudden here we are at mothers day. It was all in all a great week and I have lots to do next week. I hope to find you again next week and as always thank you for reading.

What I learned This Week. Week 10.

Ethan — Mon, 02 May 2022 16:50:37 +0000

This week went a little differently than the past. I helped my girlfriends parents move from Florida to Tennessee. So instead of having a paragraph for each day, I will be doing some bullet points as a summary of what I did that day.

Monday

Worked on SQL practice problems.
Practiced Spanish on Duolingo.
Read article on new machine learning technologies.

Tuesday

Applied for jobs.
Reached out to a few people via Linkedin.
Did a little SQL and Spanish.

Wednesday

Reflected on quality of resume and personal profiles.
Learned new SQL concept and completed practice problems.
Practiced Spanish.
Applied for jobs and conversated with a few recruiters.

Thursday

Drove about 10 hours down to Tennessee to help unload moving truck.
Did some practice problems and my Spanish lessons.
Slept on very uncomfortable pullout.

Friday

Unloaded moving truck.
Helped organize kitchen and living room boxes.
Finally relaxed with good food.

Saturday

Drove another 10 hours home.

This week felt slow at first but came and beat my ass up before I knew it. I was happy I set myself up for success by not pushing myself. Although I didn't get near as much done as would normally. I kept up with the basics of my responsibilities to continue my good habits. I hope you enjoyed the quick read about my week and I hope to see you back here next week.

What I learned this Week. Week 9.

Ethan — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 14:55:25 +0000

Here we are at the start of another week, I am hoping for a very productive week. I have a few meetings planned so we will see how it goes.

Monday

Today was good and bad. I started out stressed because I didn't get to the things I wanted to do over the weekend. I forgot to publish my blog. It was all written I just simply forgot to publish it. I wrote out half an email and then forgot about it and now replied today. I didn't do the cleaning I meant to. I felt low about myself but wanted to just have a fresh look on today. I randomly decided to take an assessment and fell short because it was on topics I hadn't learned in the past. I know it sounds silly to beat one self up over something so small, but it really just bothered me that I did so bad. I had to separate and reset myself in order to come back and continue with my day. Which afterwards today ended up being not only extremely productive, but I had fun while doing it.

Tuesday

Today was good. Had a wonderful discussion about Dr. Who with my cousin on our way to his work today. I haven't mentioned this before but Dr. Who is one of my favorite shows, so anytime I get a chance to rant about my favorite doctor, it's a riot. I switched up my practice problems from algorithms in Python to SQL queries. As a data scientist, the skills SQL teaches me are more beneficial to have than learning how to traverse a Binary Search Tree. I also applied to some awesome jobs. For the first time ever I actually got some good insight from my educational institution about where I could be applying and found some great job opportunities that I hope to be considered for.

Wednesday

Today was a great day. It is April 20th and I am looking forward to partaking after I am finished with my working day. My practice problems gave me some grief but it always ends up being a perfect learning opportunity. I am going through freecodecamps Python course as a refresher as well, I don't want to be caught forgetting the fundamentals.

Thursday

Today was a good day again. Sadly there was some miscommunication between a friend and me. I ended up missing a meeting I was looking forward to. But we have plans to reschedule and move forward. I killed it with my practice problems today. Doing all this SQL really gets my in the mood to work for someone. I love doing data science on my own for learning purposes, but I am ready to make a difference and showcase what I can do. Not to mention the pay would be helpful. I am still living in my parents basement at the moment. I do realize that its a privilege to be able to not work and have somewhere safe to live, and I am more than grateful. I just want someone somewhere to take a chance on me, I know they won't regret it.

Friday

Today was good and bad. I had a rough start as I had a mock interview with someone I haven't met before. Even though my conscious self can maintain normal through triggering events, my sub-conscious and body still react. My sleep isn't near as restful, I can barely eat, I can't keep my head straight, I have to constantly remind myself what I am doing. Honestly it is quite debilitating. Even though I do great in the actual interview, and am not even nervous or anxious about it, my body still reacts this way before hand. After I was able to say good-bye, I immediately made some delicious food and got my self back on track. I applied to a few jobs and got my practice problems done with no issues.

Yay! Another week down. I hope you enjoyed and learned something new along side of me.

What I learned this Week. Week 8.

Ethan — Mon, 18 Apr 2022 18:11:30 +0000

Welcome to my weekly retro. I record at the end of each day. Doing so has helped me talk about what I am learning in a clear and concise way.

Monday

Today was good. I had a phone interview today that went very well. Sadly the position required to move to Arkansas and that's a no go for me. Even though the interview itself didn't bear fruit, I did learn more about how to advocate for myself and got a chance to talk about compensation for the first time. I found myself cruising through my practice problems for the day and am surprised at the progress I have made. All it takes is practice and dedication. I recently found my Nintendo DS from when I was younger and it still has life left. My dad set up an m3 adapter where I could download any game I wanted but it doesn't work anymore. So I have been digging through 16 year old forum posts trying to find some advice where I don't have to spend any money to play my old games. Its been a blast learning what my dad went through to make sure I had fun.

Tuesday

Today was great. My girlfriend slept soundly through the night for the first time in over a week. Which if you are anything like me, if your SO has a bad night, the day isn't gonna be so great either. I had a blast figuring out my practice problems today. For one of them the solution was a single command while the next had 20 lines of code. I went to the movie theaters for the first time since the pandemic and I had a blast. I went to see "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once" and I can't recommend it enough. It's hilarious, timey-wimey, and knows how to make you cry.

Wednesday

Today was okay. Very gloomy outside and I feel a lot of my families responsibilities on my shoulders. Sometimes I just want to be able to be my own person without having to worry about everyone around me first. My practice problems were a bit more difficult today. I was trying a certain approach for the problem and knew it could work but sadly I wasn't smart enough to actualize it. I ended up looking through the discussion in order to fully grasp a different method and applied that instead. Something I was reminded of today is that it is okay to ask for help. Although I really wanted to figure it out myself, I wasn't going to learn anything trying over and over again without any new information.

Thursday

Today was good. I woke up feeling refreshed after going to bed a bit later. I chose to stay up for the first time in a while in order to play some video games with my friends. It's important to integrate times like that into a busier work week to keep a good work/life balance. I took a while on my practice problems today but it was a good time. I didn't get frustrated, I was engaged and entertained for the extent of trying to figure it out. I have been having issues keeping up with my reading recently. Ever since I finished "Atomic Habits" and switched, I have been slacking off on it. Only reading a paragraph or 2 a day if that. I am still proud that I have kept up on it in a way, I just wish I had more energy to give.

Friday

Today was good. Weather was partly cloudy and windy but still enjoyable. I had a nice walk and relaxed a decent amount. I treat Fridays as my catch up and recuperate day. However I have been doing great with coding and networking, so today specifically is a rest day. I did do my practice problems, where I got a good review on object oriented programming with Python. Seems simple enough, but I forget the easiest things sometimes. I forgot how to have global variables using the self. But as soon as I saw the stack overflow post, I remembered exactly how to solve the problem. Don't hold yourself to an unrealistic standard. You will forget simple things sometimes and you will need help. That is OKAY.

Another good week over. Easter is this weekend and I am looking forward to some good food. Thank you for joining me and I hope to see you next week.

What I learned this Week. Week 7.

Ethan — Sat, 09 Apr 2022 21:38:43 +0000

Welcome back. This week was pretty uneventful. I do hope you enjoy my take on a pretty lowkey week.

Monday

Today was a great day. If you are back from last week, you know that I published and finished last weeks retrospective today. I encourage you to read it if you haven't already. I did finish my practice course from leetcode Sunday and am starting a new one today. It blows me away that just from being consistent, I have solved over 30 problems and am on a 15 day streak that I plan to continue. I am writing this a little later than normal because I had a friendly meeting with a statistician that teaches at MIT and Harvard. The meeting went wonderfully and I feel like it's a start to an amazing opportunity.

Tuesday

Today was good. Nothing eventful happened today. I did my morning routine without any distractions. I was able to get through my to-do list comfortably. Ran a few errands and now here I am. It's early even and I am done for the day. Well almost done, I still have to write this. Because I don't have a lot going on today I want to bring attention to the fact that that's okay. You don't have to be productive the entire day to be worthy of some R&R. I happened to fly through my work today and am taking the rest of the day for myself.

Wednesday

Another good day. Yet again nothing really happened today. I went through my morning routine and finished up my daily tasks. Although this week is a little different, my cousin is home alone this week and I will be bringing him to and from work. So I have a little bit less time on my hands. Today being a day for technical learning, I dove into my first topic that I wanted to learn more about: Factor analysis(FA) in python. I have some experience with principal component analysis(PCA) which is similar and a type of factor analysis. PCA components explain the maximum amount of variance while factor analysis explains the covariance in data.
I have yet to implement what I learned on my dataset, but am excited to try it out. I put the link there for anyone wanting to see what I am up to.

Thursday

Today was alright, pretty boring but nothing to complain about. I have been utilizing googles job search engine to easily find lots of jobs I easily qualify for. I have been applying to 5-10 jobs every Tuesday and Thursday since last week and plan to continue this trend. Linkedin bore some fruit today as well with a recruiter coming up on my feed. He is looking to fill jobs for remote data scientists, which is exactly what I'm looking to do. I reached out and am hoping for the best. I had a few extra practice problems today which was kind of fun.

Friday

Today was great. I ended up waking up early feeling rested and was able to start my day an hour earlier. I finished up my daily practice problems and starting looking more into factor analysis. I was able to implement what I learned on my dataset I mentioned on Wednesday. And after some tuning, I was able to get my Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test numbers above 0.6 and created a model. I ended up with 3 factors and was able to account for about 57% of the variance, up from 27% with my baseline ordinary least squares model. With this being only my first step, I am very much looking forward to the rest of my exploratory analysis.

Like I said, not a lot going on. But that doesn't mean it was a bad week. I progressed wonderfully with my know-how for exploratory data analysis. I have a new acquaintance who I hope to become friends with through our work together. And I have more opportunities every day.

What I learned this week. Week 6.

Ethan — Mon, 04 Apr 2022 16:10:00 +0000

Monday

Today was alright. I've been doing some leetcode practice problems and found myself very frustrated at the concept they were testing. Had it been normal python I could have solved it in one or two lines but they used their own object/class for the problem. It took most of my time to figure out so I didn't do a whole lot else. I did take the time to set up a couple github repositories to better explore the two datasets I mentioned last week. I didn't do much of anything with one as I would want to do text vectorization, which I didn't feel like doing today. The other I did some cleaning and ran a basic ordinary least squares regression to create a model. Without any tuning I am already accounting for approx. 27% of the variance.

Tuesday

Today was a bit rough. Woke up two hours early to a knock at my door. I needed to move two cars that were in the way of the workers here to fix the roof. So not only did I lose some sleep, I had no chance of falling back to sleep with all the banging going on. Not that I blame them for doing their job, it just adds to the stress of my day. I did great on my practice problems today, so that was nice. I tried a new strategy for reaching out for jobs and already got a reply. All I did was search for some key words on Linkedin to find hiring managers actively seeking job applicants. I highly recommend it as I have found just how helpful it can be.

Wednesday

Today was a good day. Even with it being rainy, and my car needing some fixing, I still had a good day. I got my daily problems out of the way earlier in the morning. Instead of giving my cousin a ride to work, I went out for lunch for sushi with him and his friends. We discussed a plethora of things but something that stands out is data. It was a bunch of nerds discussing how to properly analyze Pokémon data. Sadly on the way home my cars breaks went out and I had to utilize the E-brake to avoid getting towed. I brought in my car and it will hopefully be fixed by the end of tomorrow. After coming home I applied for a couple jobs and set up a bullet-point script for a mock interview tomorrow. Even though today was supposed to be focused on learning and the technical side of things, I found myself being pulled away from it by other responsibilities.

Normally you would find Thursday and Friday here with a conclusion that summarizes how my week went. Obviously that didn't happen. At the end of now last week (I am writing this the following Monday), I found myself distracted from my personal responsibilities. Wednesday was the last day I followed a routine and as you can see, it affected me. I strive to be the best I can be but also recognize that I don't need to be perfect. Just because I didn't follow through for a few days doesn't make me any less worthy of patience, respect and love. It is simply my responsibility to move forward learning from my mistakes.

What I learned this Week. Week 5.

Ethan — Sat, 26 Mar 2022 17:18:31 +0000

Welcome to my weekly retro where I go over everything I did each day. I record this as my week goes on and doing so has helped me talk about what I am learning in a clear and concise way. I feel like I have already come a long way since week 1 and can't wait to see what life has in store.

Monday

Today was great. After 4 weeks of keeping up with my routine I ended up feeling exhausted. I loved the progress I was making in many different areas and want to continue to grow, but the style of work seemed to put too much pressure on my brain. I used the weekend to revise my schedule and decided to incorporate more frequent shorter breaks and do less things for longer amount of time. I am no longer applying for jobs, networking, doing practice problems, reading emotional growth books/articles, learning new skills, reviewing statistical analysis and interview practice all in the same day. I am working on my technical skills one day, and my outreach and personal growth the next. Today was a day for technical growth, so I hoped on leetcode and started with some practice problems. I used a web compiler to test my solutions in a way to learn what each bit of code was doing. I took my time and didn't peak, every submission I solved more and more test cases. I ended up learning more about python than I have in a while without even trying to. I have been focusing on learning more complicated topics such as NLP, this helped remind me that the basics are always important.

Tuesday

Today was another great day. I drove my cousin to work this morning as he needed a ride. I grabbed some coffee on the way home and had a great breakfast with my girlfriend. Today I am focusing on networking, outreach and a little job applying. I hopped on my computer and reviewed my emails to find I got a response from a recruiter. I have a short get-to-know you interview on Thursday and can't wait for it. I try not to focus on just applying for a ton of jobs every time because I don't think it will provide lasting results. If I comment on 5 different peoples posts or write my own that happens to have 50 people see it, it will help me a lot more in the long run than applying to an extra 10 jobs in the same amount of time. My goal is to build lasting relationships with people who have similar interests as me.

Wednesday

Today was good. Woke up feeling rested, ready and raring to go. The night before I found an email asking to reschedule a quick phone interview. I was planning on having the interview tomorrow because I will be in the mindset of networking and outreach instead of solving problems from a technical standpoint. But alas, it worked better for my interviewer to get it done and I am honestly happy that I got it done. I did wonderfully, she will be getting back to me sometime soon, and I don't have to deal with the anxiety of it anymore. I also worked on some leetcode problems for review but didn't make enough time to explore a new data science skill. I had a few errands to run throughout the afternoon and it ended up taking more time than I anticipated. My hope is to find a dataset to work with. I haven't flexed my analysis skills in a bit and I am itching to get working again.

Thursday

Another great day. The early hours were stressful as my girlfriend went to small claims court in the afternoon. However it was also her birthday so we did our best to celebrate. She did win and it was interesting to see how incompetent some people are. She was fully prepared, looking professional and followed the procedures of presenting evidence with witnesses. Meanwhile her ex-bosses, who refused to pay her severance, looked unkempt on their kids school laptops and tried/believed they could win with hear-say. Needless to say, the judge saw right through their unprofessionalism and handed the case to my girlfriend right away.
Being on the bottom of the proverbial totem pole when it comes to the world of data sometimes makes me forget that I am in fact more prepared and professional than I once believed.

Friday

Today was great yet again. My girlfriend slept soundly through the whole night. I wouldn't normally note something like this but its the first time in months so I am very happy for her. I believe it is because the stress of her court case gone. I didn't mention this yesterday with everything else going on, but I was contacted by BI advisor who also works part time at Harvard. He wants to work on an analysis project with someone (me :D) for learning purposes. Which if you forgot, is exactly what I was wanting Wednesday night. Only now this could lead to not just review and some learning, but possibly an endorsement and even a job opportunity. More than anything though, I am excited to work as a team. Everything I have done thus far has been on my own and I am ready to show what I can do.

This week was great. I didn't have a single bad day. That doesn't mean I was happy all the time, but as a whole there wasn't much to complain about. If you have any questions or words of advice, I am always happy to talk. Otherwise thank you again for joining me, and I hope to see you next week.