sudeshna

3 min

Career diaries from a Data Science Consultant - week 1

Monday:

7:30 AM - I am on the way to work. I'm reading "Thinking Fast and Slow" on my way to work. I try to read a book during the morning journey and The Economist on the way back. I love the coffee from H&H at London Bridge, so will pick up one before I get into work.

12:30 PM - Going to grab lunch. The day started with our daily stand-up at 9. I am working on a project for this investment bank who are trying to build an AI model. Need to have a clarification session with my manager post lunch since it's a new project and I don't understand banking well. Don't want to eat at my desk - I can afford the time today to nip out of work.

6 PM - Called it an early day today. Asked a bunch of seemingly stupid questions to my manager and she walked me through the problem in detail. Still a lot to learn! Heading to the gym and then home.

11:00 PM - Had dinner. I had been researching credit models this evening. Downloaded a couple of interesting papers and shared with the team. Will figure out the project more tomorrow.

Tuesday:

7:30 AM - My commute doesn't vary much - still reading that book.

13:00 PM - Late lunch today. Grabbed a sandwich at the desk. Had a morning full of meetings. Wonder if I was required in all. Need to find a way to have a clearer diary. Team is reading the papers I shared - never thought would ever work for a team interested in reading research papers! My first few weeks at this company was pure blue collar work... LOL how things change!

7 PM - Discussed the approach of the problem today. We're still defining project roles. I want to do most of the coding coz that's my strength. Heading home now. No gym today. Will listen to a podcast on the way back.

Wednesday:

12:30 PM - Been a manic day of assigning roles and responsibilities for the project and aligning with the client and our vendor. I got the role I wanted on the project. Manager is coordinating and getting all the data, providing domain knowledge, and handling client. Director won't have time since he has 2 other projects to look after. Apparently step up opportunity for us- we shall see!

6:30 PM - Have been reading a lot of papers on sentiment modelling. Interesting stuff - wonder what works well for this project. I also nominated myself to be the lead L&D person for helping the broader team learn R and Python.

10:30 PM - Was working on my personal project. Got a dataset off Kaggle and was trying to run some predictive models. Tired now, will crash.

Thursday:

10:30 AM - Today is a bit more relaxed since we're still getting into the project groove. We have most data from a third party - question is, can we wrangle to suit our needs? I'll try checking if there's an API access.

13:30 PM - Getting lunch with one of the other associates who is in a different team. Need to understand if am placing my bets on the right career here.

11 PM: Went to the gym. Read the new edition of the Economist and cooked dinner.

Friday:

11 AM - Most of the people are back in office after the week. Project still slow but it's Friday!

5 PM - Heading for our team drinks!

Saturday:

13:30 PM - Thankfully didn't get too sloshed last evening, so still could make the morning productive. I am doing these courses on Datacamp - feel good that have learned something. Now can happily spend the rest of the day on Netflix..!

    510
    0