Why did I want to start a career in data science? There is a lot of thought that went into this decision and there was no single contributing factor. I went to college to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering, mainly because I was loved math and science, but wasn’t sure exactly where I wanted it to take me. After graduating I moved to DC and started working in the construction industry for Hilti North America. I liked to consulting aspects of my job and I enjoyed running business analysis for my customers to see where I could improve their business and make our partnership better, but as a whole it was not what I wanted to be doing. I’ve been asked time and time again, like most of us are, “if I could be anything in the world, what would I choose?” I’ve always hated this question because I never had an exciting answer. I never wanted to be a singer or a professional athlete or an astronaut. My answer was always, if I could do anything I would want to be Jonah Hill’s character in the movie moneyball and leave it at that. It wasn’t until I started looking for new jobs that I started thinking this could be an option. I focused on what I like from my current job and looked for jobs that were more aligned with my goals. A lot of these jobs required some experience with Python or SQL so I thought I would teach myself the basics and see if I liked it. I did. It reminded me of the coding class I took in college, I loved the problem solving aspects of writing the code and seeing it run after figuring out exactly what you needed to type. It wasn’t until I started doing this that I realized there are schools and careers based off of these computer programs. I immediately started searching for careers and came across the title “Data Scientist”. It wasn’t something I have ever heard of, but I felt like it was what I was supposed to be doing. I started reading different job descriptions and responsibilities and it checked off the boxes for me. It also is a broad enough field that I could work in multiple industries and find my own path. Once I realized that I wanted a career as a data scientist, I started looking into how I go about it. That is when I discovered the flatiron school’s data science program. The flatiron school was the perfect fit for me and helped me take the first step on my journey of becoming a data scientist.