I wanted to write a mid-year update about the expectations I created earlier this year in reference to this post.

One thing I slowly realized is that it’s easy to set goals that will benefit you in the long run, but have them placed in the backburner since they seem daunting or even boring to start. This was the case when I wanted to find a job post-graduation as the main priority, leaving many of my expectations to die to fatigue of mentally burning out from one rejection letter after another.

It made me realize that I should be more realistic about the amount of expectations placed in one time period, and to congratulate myself on the achievements (and even failures) during such time span.

Here’s a refresher of the expectations I placed earlier this year:

Here’s what I did complete:

  • Learn how to create interactive dashboards through Shiny (R*) or Bokeh (Python), and learn which KPI's are important to convey to certain stakeholders (such as: focusing on sales, margins, volumes and conversions -- or the performance of a products in different regions).

    Although I did not learn the fundamentals of Shiny or Bokeh, I did learn Streamlit and created a personal project that displayed a dashboard about Grailed. This project can be found here.

  • Be employed as a data analyst, and continue to grow in my free time to transition into a career as a data scientist.

    My biggest accomplishment! Although it took me 6 months (and 150+ applications to data analyst/data scientist relevant roles, I finally landed a job. I still plan to make a future post (the failures & success) and general overview and overall reflection about the whole process.

Here’s what I did not complete:

  • Re-learn statistical, ML, and AI theory for interviews.

    Unfortunately, I was completely burnt out from learning Data Science through college; and every attempt to re-learn the material was almost impossible. I decided to focus on potential questions that were relevant to each interview instead.

  • Learn Docker containerization and its relation to deployment, AWS services like Redshift, Azure, or GCP.

    I was really sad that I did not take the time to learn this. Cloud services sound fascinating to me, and is relevant to my current job. This will be a priority for the future if I decide to learn something new.

  • Become a full-stack python developer, namely to learn web development and then learn how to deploy web applications to present models I built through projects.

    This was completely expected as this is more of a pipe-dream. However, I would still love to learn more about web-development so I can create a personal website (that’s not a blog) for myself to express my creativity.

I think I am going to cut down the amount of expectations placed each year so I don’t under-value the ones I do want to prioritize.

So here’s the top four expectations for the next six months:

  1. Pass my CPCU first course exam (this is relevant to my current job and industry).
  2. Find a solid friend group here in the DMV area.
  3. Finish furnishing my apartment so I can create a safe haven for myself and my friends.
  4. Figure out what hobbies to learn on my free time.
    • deciding between chess, music (guitar or piano), plants (green thumb), or creating videos (+ start yt).

To growth, ya’ll!