2021 Review

Facebook memories have led me to write a 2021 review.

The above photo is a memory of what my life was like in 2011. My mother had passed away that year. I could try and recount/recollect the following years, but I wrote a couple of books about what those were like. Check them out here.

Uncertainty

In 2020, I was laid off/fired from my job at Metro Market. I was told that I can never work at Kroger again due to the nature of the situation; wherein I acted out after being threatened. Panicked and afraid that I would be evicted (again) or that I would have to walk miles to get beat by Amazon (again); I signed up for a data science boot camp at Thinkful. I took their $1500 stipend with the income share agreement to cover my expenses while I worked my butt off to earn the certificate.

Now. We move forward to 2021. The beginning of 2021 started with finals. I completed the last of the data science course with a comprehensive project that used as many data science techniques as one could perform. The results were exciting and absolutely fantastic. The beginning of the project had me in disbelief that I’d be able to classify these observations; not only was I able to perform the task with 99% accuracy using a deep learning model, I found and learned that the accuracy was significantly lower in my decision tree on account of my poor choice in dimensionality reduction. I went too small and that had a gross impact on the results. That project can be found here.

Growth

Once I graduated, I spent – what seemed like – every waking hour job searching and networking. I had a great time and a few conferences and, at one point, was forced to acquire an iPad in order to gain access to Data Talks, an interactive broadcast that occurs on Clubhouse. At the time, Clubhouse was only accessible via iPad and with an invite. I reached out to one of my role models, Kent Beck on Twitter, whose expressions and visions in business and technology I find most worthy of discussion.

I was hoping to provide a photograph of the number of jobs that I applied to, the number of interviews I’ve had, and the number of people that I spoke with – but fortunately Thinkful removed the board we had together on Huntr, the job tracking application that we used to track these interactions. They were a lot and by the time I got hired, I was exhausted – which would be in late March.

Soon after, I got an apartment in an area of town that I find to be suitable for my highly introverted personality with a lifestyle that requires a highly social environmental surrounding. That’s plain English for, I could live in a cave for a lifetime without human interaction and be quite happy, but I shouldn’t.

Success

I was a mentor at PyCon. The internship with Tangeible AI was exciting; wherein I built a chatbot that is designed to induce happiness.

In addition to those, I applied for and got the position as a volunteer teacher through the Microsoft Teals program. My inclusion in this program is, by far, the most exciting and rewarding part of 2021. Not only am I helping young people learn and grow their experiences in STEM; I’m left with a somewhat supported feeling after suffering years of rejection – both in situations where I applied for a career as a teacher and/or in STEM as well as situations where I was declined volunteer positions.

The complex I’m in does occasional social meetups and there’s a book club involved, that I participate in. Which is second to another book club, one of which I led the discussion for a couple of sessions in 2021.

I learned that Batman Ke is a girl and got her spayed. I’ve been trying new cooking methods and meeting more people. I’ve gained some weight; which is leading me to the decision to both go give blood and looking forward to 30 Days of Yoga With Adrienne.

I discovered that this Spotify playlist I built years ago, makes the best radio.

Happy New Year

2021 was a great year, for me. I was exposed to opportunities that I would not have otherwise been afforded under different circumstances. I’m referring, specifically, to the increased number of online/virtual conferences that have been introduced due to the pandemic. Without these remote possibilities, I would not have been able to network.

Transit comes at a gross cost to an individual without income. To disregard that expense further complicates the arduous, unpaved, road on which we’ve started the journey.

I hope you all enjoyed this 2021 Review. May we all have a relaxing and positively humorous 2022.