Start a New Adventure

Every ending is a new beginning!

I quitted my job one month ago to give myself a break and opportunities to explore the world and learn new things. There were a few ideas in my mind: (1) looking for a job in a niche business, (2) going to a bootcamp to learn skills and get certified, and (3) starting a mobile food business.

A dream about food truck~

I was really into the mobile food business at first. I love to cook and share the food with other people. I did a lot of research about how to do the mobile food business. Starting a new business is complicated. I will need permits from State L&I and the fire department and public health department with the county and the city. The cost is higher than I thought as well. A food truck may cost at least $150,000. A food trailer may cost about $65,000, and I also have to get a vehicle to towel it. Eventually, I found a $ 12,500 food cart with sink, water system, refrigerator, and a griddle would fit my needs and I felt it’s affordable and my dream may come true. Besides permits and vehicle, there will be other costs. I also need to rent a commercial kitchen and a parking lot for the food truck or trailer. 

How about bootcamps?

I talked with my friends in high tech companies first to see what the needs are now and how I can approach my goal. I found out bootcamps could be a good way to achieve my goal. I started to do some researches of bootcamps today. I thought all bootcamps were about software engineering. But I found many bootcamps also offer other types of bootcamps such as Cyber Security and Data Science. I signed up and checked some pre-course materials for different types of bootcamps. When I touched Python, I felt this programming language was different from others and I can use it to let the computer do the work easily. I also found I have a good foundation of Data Science. Public Health students learned statistics and statistics software like SAS, and I has been good at mathematics since I was young. After I graduated, I have had to deal with a lot of data work in my different jobs in these years but unfortunately Excel can already fulfill my tasks. I’m good at processing data but lack the experience in using programming and large databases in a real job. I also took a UW certificate course of business intelligence a few years ago but I found most of the classmates were already in data fields and I still lack the environment and opportunity to process real data.

Conclusion by the day:

I feel I will be able to pick up the data science skills easily in the data science bootcamp. And I love data! I collect and analyze some data in my daily life because I believe in science and data and always try to make decisions by science and data. I feel I don’t have so much time at this stage of life so I decided to apply for an immersive Data Science bootcamp from September to December.