My Name is Dario Montes, and I’m originally from Honduras. Growing up, for as long as I can remember, being curious was second nature to me. Going through a traditional educational system, like the one I went to, would have most likely ended my curiosity, if it had not been for some of my teachers who encouraged it. However, I must confess that in both my educational and professional career, my curiosity has taken some hard blows, to the point I feared it went dormant. Then I discovered Data Science and got the opportunity to enroll at the IE Data Science Bootcamp. 

Before the Bootcamp started, I was trying to get ready. I was warned many times that the course was described as “very intense”, so I wanted to be prepared. I love Data and I wanted to be able to harness its amazing power, so I enrolled in some Coursera courses for programming and statistics. For a bit more than two months, I studied and practiced. I liked what I was doing, however at times, it felt longsome and lonely, but I had a mission, I wanted to be ready for the challenge.

Everyone warns you about the intensity of the Bootcamp, but no one can really put it into words. The best I can do is share that everything I saw on my own, for two whole months, was covered thoroughly in less than a week in the Bootcamp. As we start week 5 of this course, as I look back, I can only laugh at how naïve I was. I can’t help but wonder, we have come so far, yet there is so much more that remains unseen. How much more can we learn at such a pace? 

Do you remember that feeling, while growing up when learning was fun? You would come back from school, after learning all these new cool things from Science Class, or Math, and you would be so eager to go to your loved ones and share with them what you had learned? I feel like that again. Don’t get me wrong, this course is hard, humbling, and INTENSE. Nonetheless, there is an unexplainable feeling of a safety net, provided by all the teachers and classmates. It is a feeling where failure is encouraged, where the objective is to learn, leaving no one behind.

The ecosystem created by IE is second to none. You have a mix of all the professors, and students who bring their own expertise to the table, and everyone gains from it. It is a place where you push yourself, and stay committed even now at a distance in such trying times, with COVID-19, the Bootcamp remains dynamic, fast-paced, and of course, INTENSE.

As someone who feels the constant need to find innovative ways of doing things, and stand on the frontier of novelty, knowledge, research and learning, I cannot express enough how grateful and happy I am to have embarked on this journey. After every class I begin to wonder about the applications of the things I just learned, and then formulate questions I didn’t even know to ask. The great Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson said, “As the area of our knowledge grows, so too does the perimeter of our ignorance.”  Every day we meet new challenges, new questions, new failures, and many more lessons. 

So, thank you IE for creating a wonderful course, Michael Page for granting me a scholarship, my professors for their never-ending patience, my family and friends who assume I disappeared, I assure you it’s for a good cause so hang in there. Last but not least, I want to thank my classmates who now have become like family, as we have been to hell and back, through math and stats, data cleaning and more. Stay tuned for we are not done!