Expectations of Joining the Exclusive Club (Data School)

by Mina Ozgen

 

Introductions

Blogging. Blogging? Blogging!

 

Well, this isn’t all of my expectations upon coming into data school but it certainly was one of the demanding things I was expecting. I know I’m not unique in this because most of how I have come to understand the dataschool was from the content I would read on their blog and learn from. As to me blogging, maybe for some blogging is a natural thing, I am more of an in-person communicator. I will strive to rectify this and deliver some (mostly) quality content!

As a quick introduction before the bulk of my first blog post: Hi I’m Mina and hopefully I do well enough in my blogging that you will be reading some of my posts in the future – and hopefully learning a thing or two but let’s not hope too much just yet :).

The A-E of Expectations

Talking to previous cohorts I got a feel for the dataschoolers’ breadth and depth of knowledge and appreciated it was all learned in four short months. Alongside this, to set my expectations of data school, I read many blogs and asked data schoolers about their experience, the general consensus was that:

A) It’s a lot of fun. You meet, work with and learn from great people, Andy is fantastic and the work itself is enjoyable.

B) It’s demanding. You need to put in the hours and focus to absorb all that is thrown at you. I love learning so for me this is ideal, I wanted to throw myself into something I really enjoyed.

C) You will be pushed out of your comfort zone. A lot.

D) A lot of the thing you learn will be questioned and relearned, and Tableau is constantly evolving so you must pay attention and always be versatile to change.

E) Last, but most importantly, community contribution. In part, this is the initially mentioned role of being a blogger, but this also includes tutorial videos, tableau public contributions, twitter challenge contributions such as Makeover Monday, Workout Wednesday and the Alteryx Challenge. This is such a vital part of what we do, both to reinforce and develop our teachings but also to give back to the community that helped us when we were just beginning so that other people beginning and learning can find their own understanding and inspiration.

Thank you for your time and looking forward to your attention during the foreseeable future :).