Work & Study

Q: Do you work or are you a student? A: I work full-time now, though I was a student until about four years ago. I'm in data analysis — which sounds more technical than it usually is in practice. Most of it is helping non-technical teams understand what their numbers actually mean, which is more communication than analysis, if I'm honest. Q: What do you enjoy most about your work? A: The part where something confusing becomes clear. There's a very specific satisfaction in taking a dataset that nobody's been able to interpret and producing something that actually answers the question people have been asking. It doesn't happen every day, but when it does, it's what makes the rest worth it. Q: Do you have to work with other people, or mostly alone? A: A mix, but leaning towards collaborative. I tend to spend mornings doing the more technical work independently and afternoons in meetings or working through things with colleagues. I think I prefer it that way — the solitary work is more focused, but without the discussions I'd probably solve the wrong problem more often. Q: If you could change one thing about your job, what would it be? A: Honestly, the number of meetings that could have been an email. That's not unique to my field, but it's genuinely the main drag. The work itself I find reasonably interesting; the overhead is what wears you down over time.