For the past couple of years, I've been tossing around the idea of creating a blog for my professional life. Now that I am beginning a career transition, from the world of academic research to data science, it seems like an opportune moment to make one.

As a starting point, I wanted to write down my answer to that ubiquitous job interview question: "Where do you see yourself in x years?"

In a year, I see myself as employed full-time in a data scientist position, working with Python and R to construct models for making predictions from interesting data¹ and to create user-friendly interfaces to visualize and communicate this data to others. I will be contributing to at least one open source project and actively continuing to improve my programming skills and knowledge of statistical methods.

In five years, I see myself moving up the career ladder wherever I am employed. I will be engaged with local developer communities and other professionally relevant organizations (e.g. participating in hackathons, attending conferences). I will be "paying it forward" by following the example of those who have helped me with my career and mentoring junior colleagues. I will have grown fluent in at least one new programming language. I will have started my own open source project in addition to making contributions to others.

In ten years, I see myself in a leadership position of some sort at my place of employment. I will have a robust professional network. I will still be acquiring new skills and mastering new methods as the landscape of the data science field grows and changes.

Right now, I've been focused on putting together portfolio projects to show potential employers. The above goals seem rather remote given that I am in the trenches of job hunting. But keeping the big picture in mind should help motivate what I do now.