Weeks 12 - Fin: Better Late Than Never

Greetings CodeNewbies 👋🏾

Welcome to the final installment of my #100DaysOfCode weekly (turned biweekly, turned quarterly 😅) recap. I did not intend to be gone for so long, but life decided to heat up right as I was nearing the end of my 100 days. It quickly became apparent that I could not do all the things, so I dropped the thing that I liked the least: writing blog posts. Not that I don't love sharing with all of you because I do; it's just that writing these posts takes more time than I'd like it to. I think it's some weird combo of perfectionism and writer's block. Anyway, I didn't want to stay ghost forever, so I decided to come back and finish what I started.

Let's get into it.

What I Said I Would Do

The last time I was here (back in July 🙈), here was my plan:

• Finish Processing Data from Dirty to Clean (course 4 of 8 in the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate)
• Be in the middle of coding up the Journal Lite feature (for my personal XDaysOfY Tracker CLI app)

What I Actually Did

I completed both of those goals. I finished course 4 of the Google certificate a few days after publishing my last post, and then I went on to complete the Journal Lite feature of my app. You can view XDaysOfY in its current (still CLI) form by visiting my pinned repos on GitHub: anitabe404/XDaysOfYTracker.

I had plans to continue working on the app to convert it from a CLI to a GUI, but that ultimately got shelved as my interests started to shift and life got more hectic. I also had plans to continue on with the Google Data Analytics Certificate, but I found that the courses weren't challenging enough for me, and I was bored with the curriculum. Many of the skills they were teaching (ex. using Excel) were things I already knew how to do from years of performing safety and reliability analyses. The new stuff also felt very basic. After a while, it didn't feel worth it to continue with the certificate.

Despite this, I am happy to report that I finished the overall challenge, coding for 100 consecutive days from May 4th to Aug 11th. I celebrated with a tweet:

Anita B

@anitabe404

🎉 Day 100 🎉
Completed Day 10 of Kaggle's 30 Days of ML.

When I started, I was scared that I wouldn't make it 100 days & here I am. I should've prepared a speech, but I've been too busy coding.

Stay tuned for a post in the #CodeNewbie community. I'm overdue.

#100DaysOfCode

07:03 AM - 12 Aug 2021

Robert Lin (@r002 ) made me this really nice certificate. I wasn't expecting him to do this, so of course I got all teary-eyed when I saw it (which I never told him so shhhh 🤫). I absolutely love it.

The 100DaysOfCode challenge had been something that I'd aspired to for years, but never followed through to completion. I had tried it a few times before only to get frustrated and quit after a few days. When I started this journey, I didn't really believe in my ability to make it to the end. I had a little ember of hope floating in a sea of doubt and multiple past experiences of failure. It went beyond 100Days to all of the times that I'd attempted to learn to code and gave up because of self-doubt and life.

One small decision to try again turned into another small decision to post in the CodeNewbie community, which turned into another small decision to join a study group on GitHub that Robert, who I didn't know at the time, had recently started. Each day for 100 days, I made the small decision to code, to read, to keep going no matter what.

As I was nearing the end of the challenge, I made a small decision to join a 30 Days of Machine Learning (ML) challenge by Kaggle after another codenewbie, Matt C @mccurcio , encouraged me to do it along with him. I had taken a course on AI and ML a couple years ago, and I didn't really have an interest in it, but I decided to participate anyway. It was the best decision ever! I quickly became enamored with ML and data science.

The more I learned, the more my path shifted from software engineering to data science. I started reading some books, subscribed to some newsletters, and signed up for Codecademy PRO, working through their data science pathway. It was going great, but I felt like I needed more.

I came across an Instagram ad for a data science bootcamp through the division of continuing education at the University of North Florida (UNF). They are partnered with Springboard and offered a data science curriculum with weekly technical mentorship calls. My small decisions had prepared me to make the medium-sized to join. October 4th was my official first day of data science bootcamp. It's all online and self-paced, and I've really enjoyed building my Python skills and learning about all the data modules (pandas, matplotlib, seaborn, scikit-learn). Plus, my mentor is really cool.

At the same time that I was finishing 100Days and contemplating the bootcamp, I also made the decision to reenter the workforce. I had interest from two aerospace & defense companies that were looking to fill safety & reliability engineering roles. I received and accepted an offer from one of them. I'll be starting next month. It was quite the time coding, interviewing, and deciding on whether or not to go to bootcamp while still mom-ing, but here I am, off on a bunch of new adventures.

Final Thoughts

If I could only leave you with one thing, it would be this: no matter how terrified you are or how many times you've failed in the past, make that small decision today. You never know where it'll take you.

Until we meet again, code on!