I’m Sahil Chugani, and I’m currently a senior at Florida State University. I’m going to graduate on May 3 with a degree in Statistics. After graduation, I’m going to be a data analyst in South Carolina for BlueCross BlueShield. My time as a Data Fellow has been nothing short of phenomenal. When I first started here, I was excited to get to work and advance my data science skills. As a Data Fellow, I’ve done that and so much more.
When I first started, there was a lot of information to take in, from learning what data management is to how to communicate with coworkers/supervisors in an office setting. I was very grateful to have the support of my workers as well as my supervisor, Nicholas Ruhs, to guide and assist me throughout the process.
After my initial training period, I set to work on various projects. With the support of the Libraries staff, I was able to engage in projects where I learned more about data management, such as by looking at data that considered whether losing on purpose, or “tanking”, was beneficial for NFL teams. Furthermore, I was able to learn tools such as PySpark for machine learning with their assistance and guidance. One project that I recently worked on was analyzing data regarding the usage of certain tools by library staff members, and it was thrilling to see the results. I loved being able to use both Tableau and Python for my project, and I was able to work at my own pace with my timeline.
In my opinion, the Data Fellow position is largely what you make of it. If you work hard with the 10 hours you work every week, over a few years, it’ll amount to great things. In addition to the data analysis projects I’ve completed, I was able to teach other students about data and connect with them. If you’re not aware, the FSU Libraries host an event called “Love Data Week” the week of Valentine’s Day every year. In these events, we asked people to guess the amount of smarties or marshmallows in a jar. I loved being able to use my statistics knowledge to create normal distributions for the data set, enabling students to use math to figure out the answer. Furthermore, it was great to interact with students and teach them about data. I loved what we did this year especially, where my colleague Reagan Bourne had a great idea to have students answer questions by spinning a wheel.
Furthermore, I hosted office hours every week, where students could come in and ask me to help them with anything data-related in classes or otherwise. I created a Canvas page and developed a workshop to teach students about SQL as well as data as a whole. Furthermore, I created a beginner’s and advanced Python tutorial for the FSU Libraries. I am very proud of these, and I believe that they have the potential to help many students in the future.
Overall, I’m very grateful to Nick for taking a chance on me two years ago and for the Data Fellow program as a whole, as it enabled me to advance my data science/analysis skills and prepare me for the future. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
This blog post has been authored by Sahil Chugani (Senior STEM Data Felllow) at FSU Libraries.