The Journey to Business Mastery: Entry 1

“I’m not sure I know what is happening”

This was the thought in my head during my first Data Analytics class at the start of the semester. As someone who had only barely won the fight against calculations and mathematics in secondary school, the thought of getting back into any form of calculations was making my head spin. But in class I realized that by choosing to start an MBA program, I wasn’t just going to get back into calculations, I was also going to be learning about a subject that was somewhat foreign to me, data analytics.

In the first class, I was made to understand that the goal of the course isn’t to have me transform into the greatest data analyst in existence, but rather, it is for me to be able to understand it well enough to not have critical information fly right over my head, as a business manager.

So far, I’ve learnt that Excel does a lot more than I have ever attempted to make it do. Frankly, all my previous “work”, in excel now looks like child’s play, in comparison to what I learnt by the 3^rd session. I had only used it in the most basic of ways and was and still am unaware of a majority of what it can truly do. But then, I learnt about the creation of a pivot table and all the colors and graphs used in presenting data, made the creative in me very excited. But by the next round of classes, I realized the fun train had left town and I wasn’t on it any longer.

In the next class, we had a different facilitator who went down a completely different path. In fact, his breakdown of what the course would be like going forward, made the fun Excel work from the previous week, look like child’s play to me. He launched into a list of requirements for a solid data analyst and with each one, my panic level climbed higher. This was because he mentioned a few programming languages and software I had no experience with. I had begun to feel like I had been thrown into the deep end of a swimming pool; I feel this way quite a lot when it comes to the MBA programme in general but with a few adjustments, there will be a drop in the frequency of that feeling.  Back to data analytics.

But thankfully, in the middle of the class and my growing panic, we were informed that although this list of requirements would be essential to make one a solid business analyst, they weren’t requirements for the course itself. It felt like I had been pulled up to the surface and my breathing settled. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against learning anything new, I’m enrolled in an MBA program so I expected I would have to. My relief was in the fact that the pressure to learn those new skills immediately, had been lifted. I got even more relieved when I realized that we would be going back to my newfound love, Microsoft Excel. The moment of panic aside, I’m excited to learn new things through this course.

Till my next entry on learning, I bid you good day.