Recently, I was talking to some friends that were born in east Asia and lived in the United States for a limited time. At the time, I had been watching several Youtube videos about first time reactions to movies which led me to ask them how many Hollywood films they had seen that were made before 2000. I was not really surprised but they could name very few and some of the most iconic movies were completely unknown to them. This led to hours of talking about the best movies we had all seen and below are some movies that I thought were some of the best.

My last article was a bit long so hopefully this one is more concise. Although this article is an important topic - it’s about personal growth. Everything from this past year where I think I have expanded my current skills or identified a potential preference that brings joy to myself. Below is a short list of some of my key findings:

By September 2022, I had begun distributing my resume to potential employers. It was somewhat of an odd experience - partially because I had not truly done an interview since 2018 and partially because everything is now performed online. I had sent out resumes in February 2020, as I was finishing my data science certificate program at Northwestern, but everything was shutting down due to COVID by the next month and all hiring just stopped. I think I had applied for 20 positions at that time. This time I applied for only 8 positions but each one was something that I thought would be a very good fit and happily had 4 positive responses.

I must say that I have benefitted from the work from home experiences of the past few years. By saving two hours each day on commuting and being able to utilize my time at home very effectively, I have been able to add significant time developing data skills. With my schedule from before the pandemic, I don’t know if I could have had enough time or energy to be able to include meaningful learning. So I give strong praise for work at home for its ability to support independent research.

So I would say that I have been developing my data science knowledge-base since the summer of 2019. Around that time, I took several Standford University online classes and started a six month Northwestern University Data Science Certificate Program and since Spring 2020 I have been a data science teaching assistant.

I made some changes in early 2022 after realizing in 2021 that my schedule was just not productive with my future interests. By mid-2021, I had completed my data science certificate program at Northwestern University, two rotations as a teaching assistant with the same program, 4 data science online classes, and multiple self-study projects.

As an engineer or in any role that I have had, I always looked at my job as doing two different tasks:

1. Increase Yield (Product Output)
2. Increrase Efficiency (Decrease Cost)
   • OR the combination of the two for a blockbuster project.

I add this equation to my frontpage because it was used at a seminar during my junior year in college by a guest lecturer who was originally from DOW Chemical. There was nothing complicated about the seminar but the concept presented was incredibly insightful and concise. The topic was about Design Principles and here are a couple heuristics that I remember vividly:

• Good designs avoid needless complexity
• Good designers do the least amount of work possible
• AND the quality of a solution is proportional to the number of scenarios it solves out all the potential problems that exist.

What I am about to write should be Part II of my Philosophy post because it had a pretty profound affect on how I thought about my career.
If my memory serves me, all this occurred in one week near the beginning of my senior year at Purdue University.

Well this is a difficult question. I think if I really knew I would have been doing that job years ago. For me, I originally went into chemical engineering because I enjoyed the types of problems I was presented and over time I used more and more technology. It’s quite amazing to me when I think about how I went from a rural area with little internet and computer needs to programming Distributed Control Systems.

I think I can say I have had a very broad range of experiences thus far in my career but the common theme is that I have always done a little bit of everything at the places I have worked.
This is not exactly what I had envisioned when coming out of college - I thought I would become a specialist but due to the nature of what was needed, I shifted roles every couple months and adapted to new technologies so by default I think that makes me a generalist. I’m beginning to doubt that thought after meeting multiple data scientiests and am starting to think I would fit well in a data career.

I LOVE CHICAGO. Just plain and simple - its a city and neighborhoods with traditions that make me feel proud and energized.

I have lived in many different areas - Indiana, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Illinois, etc - but despite how hard I work, I am always able to find something to do in Chicago that refreshes me.