Reflection & Future Goals
Reflection
As described on my Takeaways page, I drastically enhanced my knowledge and abilities in computer science, business, writing, and professional skills over the course of my internship with Harbor Labs. Coming into the internship with merely a minimal computer science background, I really gained a feel for how software development works. I also realized the importance of running a business using business analytics supported by frequent research. Finally, I developed communication skills that have allowed me to thrive in a team setting.
Learning about how Harbor Labs is managed using business analytics has inspired me to pursue a minor in business analytics.
Perhaps most importantly, I experienced the most important realization in my entire life - the more we are exposed to a specific field of study/work, the more we realize just how much we don't know. This idea came to mind as I was quickly picking up new skills within computer science and I began to realize how much I'd really like to learn. This taught me that I must continue to educate myself on my own continuously over the course of my career.
This inspired me to learn the linux command line, and I am proud to announce that I have designed and will be teaching a Student Initiated Course (STIC) on Command Line Tools at the iSchool here at the University of Maryland. Before approving the course, the iSchool committee requested me to submit a document talking about myself and explaining why I was qualified and wanted to teach the course. I included the document that I submitted to them below, which tells the story of my professional and technical growth at Harbor Labs and how it allowed me to gain valuable skills and to share my passion and excitement for those skills with my peers.
If you're short on time, here is an excerpt from the document that describes how my time at Harbor Labs had changed my philosophy on learning new skills:
"I was getting my work done more efficiently, and from then on I realized that learning can be a fun and routinely developing hard skills are essential to being successful in the field today."
Goals
After my time at Harbor Labs working with business analytics and computer science I decided that I would like to pursue a career that involves both of these components. It is for this reason that I intend to pursue a career as a data scientist. Data scientists work with both structured and unstructured data and employ statistical analyses to look for pattern in the data that can help to optimize and improve business practices, discover scientific anomalies, and look for trends in our society. It is my hope that with the critical thinking skills that I have developed in the Scholars program and the technical and professional skills gained from Harbor Labs and related coursework that I can eventually get a job as a data scientist.
In order to ensure that I gain sufficient background in the field, I plan to complete my Information Science major and Business Analytics minor coursework prior to graduation. Upon graduating from the University of Maryland I plan to pursue a MA or PhD in Data Science before searching for data science positions in the business or government fields.