It's nice to post again with this semester proving to be one of the most important series of months I've experienced yet. As vaguely described in my previous post, I am focusing more on developing technical skills related-to but expanding outside the typical range of capabilities of someone on my previously-defined academic and professional path. To give a simple explanation of my shifting focus impacting my career trajectory, I am no longer planning to directly enter a graduate program for I/O Psychology, and I may not ever choose to formally study in that field. On my new journey to practice data science wherever the adventure takes me, I am looking for opportunities to translate my continually developing programming skills to problems in the spaces that I find interesting. I would like to primarily focus, for now, on opportunities relating broadly to Training and Development and Human Resources Management, but I only say this because I feel as though the work would provide familiar ground on which I can continue to build my capabilities and transition into more technical roles involving Business Intelligence or Data Science Training/Education. That is my shortened version of my intended direction post-graduation, and the blurry image of my future is shifting focus to be a bit less of a blur.
As I work through this semester, I am enjoying using my involvement in various organizations to connect with the community on campus. Through sponsored presentations in the Psychology Department supported by Psi Chi and the Psychology Club, as well as local re-broadcasts of keynote presentations hosted by The NSLS National Office, I've maintained a presence that I was afraid would be partially lost with greater focus on completing my undergraduate thesis. I am looking forward to participating in the few events planned throughout the rest of the semester: a final speaker broadcast with NSLS, a MBTI workshop with Psi Chi, and a service collaboration with my three organizations and a few others on campus. My Colloquium project was described in my last post as studying to obtain a high-level understanding of a range of machine learning principles that I will practice in simple projects through this semester and next. Because of the growing complexity of my current projects, I have been spending much of my time on what would be better described as a continuation of my project from last semester, with a bit of this semester's intended project mixed in. I am very happy with this outcome and will better benefit professionally from this outcome. I am learning many of the typical approaches to data wrangling used by practitioners that favor RStudio's Tidyverse suite, and I am working to develop an understanding of more advanced R programming principles, especially complex manipulation operations and reactive web development (still just R Shiny; JS to come after Python). Many of the resources I have found very useful are well-structured books authored by experienced members of the RStudio team, and I hope to update next semester on an idea I have for this blog related to one of the topics that I am beginning to research in greater depth. Stay tuned for those updates, and feel free to ask me questions about the specifics of my work! I wish to everyone a happy Thanksgiving holiday and safety for those that dare risk Black Friday brawls. Should the location of these posts change, this site will have a post with a link for redirection. Stay happy, my friends. -JD
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