Welcome to the first post in my blogging experiment!

I can tell 2016 is going to be a big year for me. I have a lot of upcoming changes in my life, which is good (if a tiny bit scary). So with all that’s going to happen, why I am also trying to start blogging? That’s a good question. I’m not sure I have a better answer than I want to. I want to document my thoughts, reactions, trials, and successes as I make a career transition.

So to kick it all off, more about me, where I’m coming from and where I’m heading:

I’m originally from the midwest, but spent 5 years on the east coast after college before moving to northern California three years ago. Now I call the Bay Area home. I miss the east coast sometimes, but the beauty (and mild weather) of California has certainly grown on me.

I am a total health nerd. I have a Master’s degree in Public Health from Boston University and have been working in public health research for the last several years. I work for a group that uses informal, online data sources to better detect infectious diseases. My pet project is focused on immunization and making it easier for people to get their flu shots. It’s pretty fascinating stuff, and over time I’ve become more and more interested in the technical side of it all. I anticipate I will continue to love (and likely write about) health tech and all the exciting possibilities in that field.

As such, I’ve spent the last year or so learning more and more about data science. I’ve been learning to program (dabbling in R, now focusing on Python), brushing up on stats classes, and ever so gently dipping my toes into machine learning. I was swimming along this way, until the end of 2015 when I decided to take the plunge: I applied to a couple data science immersive programs (AKA bootcamps). I’m so excited to announce that I will be joining the Galvanize Data Science Feb ’16 cohort on their SF SOMA campus.

So now I’m steeling myself for the intensive whirlwind that I’m sure the program will prove to be, as I gain a solid foundation of core data science skills in just 13 short weeks. When researching the program, I read through a couple former student’s blogs and found it really useful to hear their first-person experiences. Let’s see where it takes me!