Monthly Reflection is a project where I document my learning stuff and life experience last month. The project is aim to hone my English writing skills and track my spiritual status, if you are interest in my life, feel free to subscribe the project. 🎈
Introduction
Essay writing is the topic that I have never thought to be difficult before. I considered it as a simple translation between “how I thought” and” how people get my point”. In the past six month, however, I struggled with essay writing stuff when drafting my Statement of Purpose (for MS application) and documenting my model building procedure(for work). In fact, English had never become my pain point because I could always get decent grade in tests until recently I realized how unorganized and redundant my article was. I still remember when I enrolled in my current company, my manager told me that the most difficult part of my work isn’t the ML model building, but Data Preprocessing and Documentation. At that time, I didn’t put it in mind since I was confident to complete a 15 pages essay with my current English level.
I was wrong.
Writing essay with organization and precision is hard. Make the essay appealing is harder. After seeing so much well-organized essay on medium or tech blog such as the 3K Stars Github Repository, CS 50 in Harvard, Flask Tutorial Documentation, I felt like my writing skill is a piece of shit. Now, I can sincerely appreciate people who could coherently and interestingly express their thoughts in writing.
Topic
The key takeaway and reflection in the very first month in 2021 is as following
- Dichotomy Avoidance
- Flask Learner
- Relationship Communication
Dichotomy Avoidance
Dichotomy is horrible. It stagnates people's thought and splits people to two polarized parties — Like and Dislike.
However, the world doesn't work in this way because most things falls on overlapping areas. Today you may denounce big companies for overly damaging Amazon Rainforest; another day when we become the decision maker, would you be willing to stand on the left-wing side sacrificing your companies and your own interest still? The example is not the point. My point is that we shouldn't be so determined to hate anything. Observe first and judge later.
There are two reasons that may contribute to the dichotomy disaster:
- It is easier and instinctive to love or hate one thing than check the fact.
If we see the keyword like China, the stereotype of brainwashing, wolf culture, human trafficking may occur to our mind; when we see Iran, we may think of extremism, terrorism, women in the mask and so on. But if I tell you that lots of Chinese have little different comparing to our Taiwanese or Iran is actually one of the most westernized country in Middle East, you may reject my idea strictly because it doesn't correspond to what your heard before. If we logically analyze the topic, we would find out that the information you receive is filtered by people with intention. Therefore, instead of hearing the news, listening to voices from the opposite side.
2. We are not familiar enough with things we dislike.
In the past, I didn't like people always chat about stock. In my opinion, buying stock at low price and selling them at high price has little benefit for the world. On the other hand , I respect people devote themselves to helping African children get away from starvation and disease. Watching secular and greedy people really makes me sick. However, my mind had changed recently. I started figuring out that some people may simply take investment as the hobby that makes them happy. The concept is similar to my interest in playing poker, writing code, road run, backpacking, etc. We disapprove others because we don't put ourself in their shoes. We don't get the pleasure because we don't even give it a try. As a result, the best solution to the topic is to jump in and try to taste the joy they experience. Maybe you would start falling in love with it, maybe you wouldn't. The experiences you have gone through are whatever better than simply being a hater.
Disclaimer: My idea only apply on legal and healthy hobby. As for illegal things like marijuana, prostitute or graffiti, we should really think carefully before leap.
Flask Learner
Since the middle of January, I started thinking of shifting my career to Software Developer and Full-End Engineer. Therefore, I embarked on the engineering journey by learning Flask — a micro web framework written in Python with online resource. This part will not focus on how I conquer the difficulties in the learning process or what the result would appear. Instead, I want to discuss about "why I make the decision" and "what's the motivation".
Before the career-shifting idea occurred to me, I desired to devote myself as a data scientist or data analyst because of a sense of satisfaction when applying quantitative and scientific method on solving business problems. However, after repeating the process, I discovered some tough problems.
The classic toolbox for DS project is consisted of tools such as Jupyter Notebook for compiling the code, SQL query for data selection, widely-used ML and Visualization packages (matplotlib, numpy, pandas, scikit-learn, etc.) for presenting results. However, in my opinion, all of the insight from data science is virtual unless the insight are implemented on products or service optimization. Take myself for example, I have gone through several Data Analysis project in courses, research lab, or side projects. Every time the projects end up with
- Insightful proposal for business application
- Positive feedback
- Nothing
Our proposal usually being ignored and failed to make critical decisions in the project. It is really frustrated to see the result to be left aside. Therefore, I come up with an idea that not until the result of data analysis being migrated into the product ecosystem does it show the value. Data Engineers construct the architecture of data flow to benefit downstream user such as Data Analyst or Data Scientist; Software Engineers integrate the algorithmic return to application and thus improve UX satisfaction. Although I know that my current experience is merely a little proportion of iceberg., I try to be more engaged in the product development pipeline because it provides me with more satisfaction.
Relationship Communication
Inconsistent career goal is the obstacle for lovers' future. Recently, my girlfriend and I encountered such a problem. I anticipate to study abroad for 2 years and work at America for at least 3 years. On the other hand, she planned to stay at Taiwan and prepared for graduate study in Computer Science. For me, studying abroad is an investment with high-risk and high-return. It could bring the opportunity to work in global companies and share values with people from different countries; also, I could also be unemployed for a long time and be forced to return to Taiwan because of financial deficiency. On the other hand, my girlfriend prefer more stable and secure lifestyle meets, which is contradicted to my adventurous characteristic. Although I could recognize our difference from the beginning of our relationship, the problem is too far to bothers us at that time.
Until last week, we had a long talk discussing about the pros and cons of long-distance relationship(LDR). Logically, maintain LDR is tough. The difference of time zone, career goal, exam pressure, and external environment could all contribute to the failure of LDR. Nevertheless, to cut down our stable and supportive relationship in a strict way is awkward and difficult. Even though we should not expect to make the most correct decision, at least we could make the less regretful decision.
Appreciate the opportunity to meet the girl with such calmness, wisdom, open-minded, beauty, and other merits.
