I have always been a very visual learner. I remember movies better than books and complicated geometrical relationships better than simple calculus theories. While maintaining a 3.5 gpa, I never felt like I excelled at computer science in college. All of my classes were monotone, verbose lectures with occasional chicken-scratch notes on an out-of-focus projector. Any graphic I was presented with gave little thought to aesthetics or even the logical flow of information necessary to maximize the speed and quality of comprehension. I could never seem to grasp the concepts like my peers did. They seemed to absorb these garrulous rants like the newest Bounty product. Regardless of the difficulty I endured, I still enjoyed learning how to use information and patterns to solve problems. In the moment when everything finally fell into place and my code worked and I somehow managed to creatively navigate the execution, that's why I stuck with it.
Although my major and I didn't quite fit, I persevered. While my peers were noticing ways to reduce clock cycles in sorting algorithms all I noticed were ways to improve the presented information. Should I have stuck with it? Maybe I just didn't realize I had a choice at the time, or maybe I was too scared. Either way I told myself that the "real world" would be different.
Accepting my new role as a data analyst consultant, I knew my clients would not only need the best analytic advice but they would need to be convinced through clear, user-friendly graphics. I was wrong. Ever presentation was a series of PowerPoint bar charts, and no one took a second to think that maybe there was a better way. I am here now because I want to start a revolution. I want to change the way we see and think about data. I want to help make complicated things simple and simple things beautiful.
Our lives are pretty complicated. The things we do everyday. Our relationships. Our feelings. We try to rationalize who we are by comparing ourselves to others and grouping similar traits and activities. When I turned 25, I stopped my complacency. I was done with consulting and moving toward my new life. I created the graphic below as a summary of my life to that point. I chose the things that were most important to me. This year it is an infographic about me; next year a time capsule. I have done a lot of things to get here, but there is a lot more data to come.
