After undergrad, I was looking for a job that aligned with my major in applied mathematics. I ended up working in the marketing department of an insurance company. A few things became quickly apparent to me. The analysis in the corporate setting can be very repetitive in nature. You are given set tasks to perform and that is it. If you finish the work, the reward is more responsibility. And you work with templates that are developed by someone else. As long as these templates are working, you are golden. When the software crashes, it is your responsibility to tell someone so it gets fixed. That was the job in a nutshell or so I thought. One day, I happen to see a coworker using a statistical program referred to as ‘SAS’. I thought- what is this SAS? And what was she doing to it? I was so jealous that she got to work with numbers. I loved numbers. We were both applied math majors from Rutgers University. I asked her when I would learn SAS and the response was a quick ‘take a night class and learn it like I did’. So I registered for what appeared to be a SAS course. It ended up being a Statistics class! Yuck Statistics. I bombed statistics in undergrad. (Check out my blog on my failures in undergrad lol).
But I aced that statistics course and learned a new skill, ‘SAS’. And so began my journey in the field of statistics…I learned two things. You need to find something interesting and pursue it. Things that hold your attention can get you through the roughest of projects. One never knows where it could lead you. And the other lesson learned is that failure has a lot to do with timing. Some disappointment is a temporary setback. So you must not operate in fear and trust your instincts.
-Moore to follow Amy
