I spoke with a young data engineer today who is considering dropping out of her master of data science program halfway through. While I still don’t think I have magic unicorn glitter to bestow upon anyone, I hope that I convinced her to stick it out.
When I was a PhD student, 4 years into a 5-year effort things got really dark. It was mentally, academically, socially, and psychologically hard. On a Wednesday morning, I drove to Olin Hall on the Vanderbilt campus and cleaned out my desk at 2 AM in a shitty, cinder-blocked lined grad student office of the chemical engineering department. I was 25 years old. I quit. At 6 AM, I drove back to Olin Hall and put all my stuff back in my desk. There was no one around to see me do this. Not many people know this story, but I guess they do now since I’m sharing it on a blog.
Why did I stay and what happened in a 4-hr time period to make me dig down deep? I really don’t know. I cried it out on the floor of my one-bedroom apartment kitchen amid my steady diet of $1 Pasta Roni boxes and a plastic bottle of Jim Beam. But all I know is that when things are getting hard, and nothing seems to be going my way, and imposter syndrome is dominating, somehow I dug deep and decided that I was good enough to finish. And I did. I graduated from Vanderbilt one year later. 17 years later, I’m glad I dug deep and made that decision.
Maybe this is my special superpower, but I like to think that a lot of students and other folks I talk to, who feel down on their luck and feel like they can’t do tech stuff and they don’t know data science, have the power to dig down deep and find a way. You have this superpower, too. Because the reality is, you aren’t as behind as you think you are. Actually, you aren’t behind at all. Actually, you are ahead.
When things get hard, and you aren’t getting that job, and so and so didn’t respond to your email request for coffee, and the client didn’t sign the contract, or whatever the case may be, dig deep. Cry it out on the floor. Put your stuff back in your desk. Have your moment. Finish.
You can dig deep.