210817 - General Assembly Pre-course

21 Aug 2017

Does a month fly by so quickly?! That’s just insane - it definitely does not feel like so much time has gone by since my last post.

So while I have been out of the country on holiday (just for 10 days - where did the other 20 days go?!), things have been progressing and I am happy to say I have been accepted into the General Assembly Data Immersive Program!!

*please excuse me while I run around like a crazy woman in happiness

So right now top priority’s changed to completing the pre-course requirements which is around 30 hours of work on Datacamp, or so it says - I’m 3 modules into the 8 required and I’m about… 3 days in (!!). While you can probably attribute it to my lack of programming ability, short attention span, etc, I would advise aspiring GA joiners to buffer some more time (say…2 weeks?) so that you can take your time and not feel pressed for time to complete it.

It’s interesting, they allow you to compare against your other peers who have also enrolled in the course, and I assure you, while there are some guys who have sped ahead and are more than complete with the pre-requisites, my speed is already, shall we say, not too bad at all.

In the meantime, apparently reading 3 books on a particular subject makes you an expert (read: allow you to possess more knowledge than majority of the population) - I’ve mustered up courage to read Deep Learning Book. My brain is burnt after struggling through just Chapter 1: Introduction, but it’s gotten rave reviews. So whoever would like a challenge, here you go - the kind folks over there have ensured the online version of the book is complete and will remain available online for free.

http://www.deeplearningbook.org/