Data scientist in the streets and the depressed in the sheets
My sample 500 word personal statement
Kicking off the hardest 3 months in the Philippines… My stint as a data scientist without my KayaCohort…
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At the top of my resume, it says:
Strategy Analyst at Amihan Global Strategies, June 2018 - December 2018
Through Kaya Collaborative, I spearheaded the first data science initiative thought from ideation to testing phase with the Philippines’ largest micro-finance bank with 8 million members.
Presented data analysis reports for clients in order to negotiate enterprise-wide recommendations towards digital transformation.
Assessed digital, technological, and organizational readiness to create strategic proposals and recommendations.
Developed a financial model for banks to grant higher, more successful loans, currently being validated with 1% of their 30,000 available members.
My first fulltime job was as a data consultant for a digital transformation firm in the Philippines through KayaCollaborative. My job at the firm was contingent upon my performance within the 6 month contract. Our clients were the biggest enterprises in the Archipelago.
Me, eager to start my discovery of self in the Philippines—unaware just how hard he would be, but adamant on portraying an image of competency and adventure.
I worked on the first data science initiative for a large bank in the Philppines. I was supposed to create a simple model to help them decide whether to allot higher loans to their clients, rural agrarian women in the Philippines.
Despite being a start-up of 100+ employees, I was the only data analyst at the company —a fresh young guppy out of college swimming in the sea of the Philippine tech and enterprise sharks. At the time, I felt so insecure about the type of work I was producing because I did not feel good enough. Everyone was giving me pats on the back and congratulations on my work but no one was diving into my scripts. They could not discern the uncertainty hidden on my face and the insecurity encoded in my ad-hoc scripts.
I spent the last 2 of those 6 months debilitatingly depressed.
Even while spiraling into depression, it’s important to portray on social media your depression in a way that is palatable, and still shows that you have a handle on things—until you don’t.
Towards every checkpoint of the project, I was working tirelessly at the office until 9 or 10, well past my coworkers. Yet I undereported my hours cause I thought that a more competent person in my place should be able to finish within work hours. Any feedback I got was good, from execs and team members, but no one who really knew what I was doing (or what I felt like I was faking). Throwing in the word “random forest” and “cross-validation” was enough to confuse the other tech consultants, but a seasoned data-scientist would see straight through my incompetency, I thought.
This was just over a year and 30+ lbs ago, when my untreated bipolar depression was at its worst. Calling life cyclical is irony at its finest…
In the end, my complicated data science model didn’t work even work well. Hours of time and lines of script to write a model that predicted success as good as guessing. I resorted to giving my clients a model that simply filtered the best clients based on simple “if this, then that” criteria and slapped on the name “hierarchial elimination” to make it sound data-sciencey. I finished the product and delivered it to the client, feeling nothing but shame and failure. I was so distraught over my lack of confidence that I ended up quitting my contracted position shortly thereafter, just 1 month prior to my contract ending —the cherry on top of my failing career as a data scientist.
Just some of the people that helped me get up every day… family, friends, certainly filipino… My heart is forever grateful for their friendship, especially during my lowest lows. They accepted depressed Kevin when I couldn’t even accept myself.
I would learn later that imposter syndrome got the best of me
The bank ended up testing my product to 10% of the clients and they liked what I perceived was just simple filtering under the guise of hierarchial elimination. They liked it so much that they signed onto more digital transformation projects with my (now prior) employer. Turns out I didn’t do as bad as I had catastrophized in my own mind.
I wish I had more confidence in my work than I gave myself credit. But hey, when you are the only data-scientist fresh out of college on a consulting team of 10, what can you expect? No one else knew how to talk data in the way I needed.” I was working blindly, without the feedback I needed.
I now live my life with more confidence in my lack of ability. Instead of being paralyzed by the fear of failure I lean into my imposter syndrome and admit to the room in front of me that just I don’t know most of the time! Nowadays, I wield my fear as a springboard and my incompetency as floaties into the deep unknown to learn what I need to know instead of pretending like I do.
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