In the Eyes of the Aspired, from the View Quite Higher

I wrote this when I was a Teller at Wells Fargo in 2016. I thought I’d share it to inspire other aspired individuals to reach not their dreams, but their goals.

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” — Tony Robbins

My activities in my youth were quite slothful. I would enjoy my time playing action shooter video games online. I recall staying up in the evenings till eleven at night in the same scenario of completing unfulfilling game challenges. Entering junior college in 2010 after high school, I made the decision to quit my lifelong passion of video games to culminate my educational career.

Furthermore, I pondered on the perception of my grandmother consistently seeing me enjoy my time playing video games as she did house chores all while working horrible late evening shifts. Her perception of me hated myself because I didn’t want to be another disappointment in my family.

I needed to change, fast.

I can grandma’s hard work ethic woven into the characteristics I provide for my activities. I have worked consecutively since my sophomore year of high school, in 2007. However, I crippled my grade point average during my attendance at University of California, Davis (UCD). I worked as a Student Housing Logistics member, where I moved incoming freshmen furniture, a Student Housing Janitor in my summers, and then became a cafe manager for one year. These indications displayed my distaste for a languid lifestyle, but should have focused that same attention to my studies.

Furthermore, to properly finance myself during my attendance in college, I needed to maintain my job status to support myself. These actions are not excuses for my average performance in my Mathematics upper division courses, but indicate the level of my productive daily activities.

Standing in the discussion of academia performance, I switched the emphasis of my major from General Mathematics to Applied Mathematics, the second to last year of my stay at UCD. General Mathematics offered simplistic theories and hypotheses with a tremendous amount of abstractive work that had no applications to world scenarios; the degree of application being higher in applied mathematics compared to the general case.

My actual shift from general Mathematics would have been Statistics, but that would have required me to not progress from my undergraduate career until spring of 2017. By graduating in March 2016 at UCD, I realized I was able to perform Statistics and other relatable Data Science applications independent from my attendance at my university.

This past fall, I moved from Davis, Ca to San Francisco to become a data scientist consultant while simultaneously delve into the data science community. However, these initial months of my data scientist goals have been set back. I could not find relatable careers outside my current in-congruent job to hone my technical skills. I am currently a teller at Wells Fargo. The rich time I utilized to financially support myself with my job pauses my technical tools and knowledge for implementing big data analysis.

My vigorous passion to become a data scientist all while being unique stems from my cautious nature to avoid generational repetition of being low income status.

My mother and several older family members never required me to go to high school. I could easily not go to high school, and not graduate from it. I could have continued playing video games and binge watching television shows in my latter part of my teen years.

Furthermore, I didn’t have to waste two to three hours in the hot weather or cold rain for public transportation to get to school. I didn’t have to work a minimum wage job to support myself to get a computer, feed myself properly, or generate funds to help my grandma.

However, my path to not be another low income statistic has lead me to be the first in my family to getting a college degree, and move forward to a progressing technical world of innovation, San Francisco…and become a Data Scientist.