Starting the Data Analyst journey

by Anna Gauthier February 17, 2021

I have always believed in signs. Trust them and follow them, that is my way of going through life. In this case, my sign popped up on the Small Business Services of NYC website while I was trying to do research on creating and operating my reCNSTRCTN LLC.

It read about a FREE Data Analytics Bootcamp for qualified New Yorkers so I checked out to see if I were one of those. The link took me here.

I submitted my application on March 3rd, thinking that if I got in, then it was just a sign to get me back on track to becoming a Data Analyst like I have been wanting since graduating from Hunter.
Six days later, I was having a phone interview with MaryBeth Carswell and Arthur Chisolm.
I was then given an assignment in Excel format which I submitted right away (more like within 3 hours).
On March 10th, I visited the Galvanize location for their Info Session where I met, both, MaryBeth and Arthur in person.
April 24th is when I received an email about being on the waitlist for Cohort 2! While I was not sure what exactly that meant, considering having 2,714 other applicants, I was still hopeful to getting the news that I was officially in.

Three days later, on April 27th, I received this email...

During the application process , I was working at Gartner Inc., as a Data Collection Specialist, but due to outsourcing they let the whole Data Collection team go on the same day, April 15th. I guess it was partially due to COVID as well because everyone was working from home for about 3-4 weeks already. It wasn't long till I got the great news of getting into the program, so the sadness of losing the job did not linger for too long.

That is when I knew, it was time to go back to studying! May 1st was when we got the invite to the Slack channel where we met the other 33 students who were part of Cohort 2. May 11th was our first official day of class. The next 5.5 months were filled with classes from 9AM-5PM, and after class review sessions on my own just to be able to keep up with the material. It was definitely a lot of new things learned - first time being exposed to SQL, a lot of Python and its packages, Tableau for visualizations of the data in our projects and statistics reviews including Excel Pivot tables and VLOOKUP.

During this bootcamp, which was fully remote, we have managed to do so many group and solo projects, which can be found on my GitHub. Even after our graduation on October 1st, the Galvanize team organized a Holiday Hackathon which included NLP, something we have not done before and where me and my partner Jonathan Ayala got 3rd place.

The program was funded by the NYC, so I am very grateful to them for giving the most powerful gift - the gift of knowledge. The next biggest thanks is to the Galvanize team which included:

Arthur Chisolm- Program Director/Senior Career Services Manager - who supported us through our job seeking process and made sure we were prepped for every step of the way.

MaryBeth Carswell- Program Lead - organized the schedule in the best and easiest possible way, did many mental check-ins, made sure we were feeling good throughout the whole program and even after.

Sean Reed- Lead Instructor - the most patient man in the world, explained everything from A to Z and made sure no person was left with questions.

Rachelle Perez - Instructor - Was there to ask questions like: "Why would the viewer care about your presentation? How can you make this presentation interesting to them?" & made sure you were prepared with the best project/presentation ever.

Vadim Acosta - Instructor - Master of Time and Excel, brought in 14th century quotes into presentations.

Donald Keeney - Instructor - walked around during his own presentations, gave beautiful PowerPoints, knew his stuff in and out.

All in all, if you ever decide to take a bootcamp with Galvanize, GO FOR IT. It is worth every second, especially if you get lucky and get to learn from this amazing team!