Classes begin!

27th Feb

After a long foreplay of welcomes and orientations, classes finally begin. And they come like a hurricane.

The course, Intro to Analytics, deals with Python, SQL and Ethics in Big Data. What will be done over the first three days is just Python. Our course instructor, Teo, has a smooth manner and soft voice. When asked who has done Python before, no one raises their hands. This somewhat relives me. “Things will move swiftly over the next three days and we expect you to retain only 15-20% of what is taught!”. The last part sticks with most of us as a morphine post a gun wound.  

Teo has two assistants who keep circling the class helping those stuck on codes. There are about 20 of us who can be classified into three cohorts – Indians, Chinese and the rest! Half of the class is  pursuing this course as part-time. These are domestic students who will complete the masters in four to five years. Rest of us are from all walks of life – an Indian guy from the auto industry, a Chinese from the immigration department, another one running his own civil construction business, freshers, hard-coders etc. There are at least four of us above 40!.

We are told to make friends with Google as only he will be able to help us with our assignments. Most ass-holes, like me, lied when they did not raise their hand to Teo’s question about past experience in Python. Many of them were doing the class exercises rather quickly. Thankfully, I learned some of Python in India, else there is no way a fresher to coding can complete this assignment – with or without Google. As if large data files were not enough, Teo and his assistants have rigged the assignment data so that one can identify errors!

Towards the end of the third day there is a session by another instructor on Big Data and Ethics. Though it is boring, we are relieved to leave the computer lab and Python behind in the basement and listen to the Dumbeldore like teacher in his late seventies talk about ethics in a sunlit room.