When I stepped out of college more than a decade ago, with a Masters degree in hand, I thought I owned the world. Then I did my first gig as a field biologist and faced nature for the first time. My experiments never went as planned as I faced everything from equipment failure to bad weather. That experience taught me one of the biggest lessons in life, that of humility. Nothing like living and studying in the wild to show your millennial ego the door. It’s funny how you learn the biggest life lessons only when you step out of Uni.
Conducting experiments in the outdoors and training at the Data School have that in common, they teach you lessons in the most unexpected ways. When I interviewed at the Data School, Steve Hitchman, the MD of MIP and Ops Director for Data School ANZ, told me that one is likely to experience imposter syndrome when one trains at the Data School. I was surprised. My ego was back by then, and it smirked as it heard this. I couldn’t possibly feel out of place, nor could I ever doubt my abilities, I thought. Soon, I started my gig at the Data School and realised how much I didn’t know about data. Nothing like training in the Data School to show your millennial ego the door.
The Data School has an initial 4-month training period and it is easy to fall into a mental trap as you go through this rigorous period. On more than one occasion I felt that self-doubt was my constant companion. While being here made me experience imposter syndrome, it also equipped me to deal with it. I made the dark grey cloud of self-doubt generate curiosity and pump up the courage to ask questions in training, no matter how stupid they sounded in my head. It helped me get clarificaitons on my doubts on the spot instead of them lingering in my head all day.
While being here made me experience imposter syndrome, it also equipped me to deal with it.
During the initial traning period here you learn tools like Tableau, Power BI, Ateryx and SQL. But more importantly, you learn how to be data analysts. You learn how to approach a problem and tackle it with an analytical mindset. In a world where market shares of BI tools keep changing, it is important to be tool agnostic.
In a world where market shares of BI tools keep changing, it is important to be tool agnostic.
And so this training period at the Data School re-wires your brain to think in a certain way. As you can imagine, this rewiring in such a short period makes the program quite intense. Not a minute is spared. So when I realized I would have to take a day off from training due to personal reasons, I thought the world would end. How would I catch up with the rest? Where could I find the time to do the stuff I had missed? As it turned out, I did find the time to catch up with the rest of class. An hour before work and an hour after, over the weekends and in the train, I found the time and headspace to open my laptop and get things done.
Thus, while imposter syndrome followed me like a shadow, it was accompanied by agility and diligence at the Data School. I learnt Tableau, Alteryx, Power BI, SQL and a bunch of other tools. But besides these, it also equipped me with an analytical skill set; something that can’t be easily picked up by watching tutorials online. You have to live it and breathe it for a few months to really tune into it. I’m glad I got that chance.
