It was an intense few weeks - we were attempting to prepare a gargantuan data set of over 500,000 transactions from 1980-2010 and for me, it was an academic baptism by fire. To date, it was the most substantial challenge (opportunity) that I've been lucky enough to encounter. I've never done research, I didn't know anything about the world of academia and had to pick it up on the fly while simultaneously attempting to give the team a data set worth presenting on.
At times I struggled to simply keep up with the cognitive horsepower of the team, compromised of Rob, Bill, Jaime Grant (PhD Candidate) and Ken Krull (Operating Partner, Mercato). It was a whirlwind two weeks and I certainly made forays into new areas of personal cognitive and physiological possibility that I didn't know existed. Even a week later, my body is still craving for more sleep than I anticipate.
Rob, despite sleep-deprivation, gave the most balanced presentation I've seen from him yet and Bill was nice enough to give me a shout out for my contributions at the end of the presentation.
Those who attended the post-presentation dinner at the Canyons were gracious enough to engage with me personally about the data and the presentation (thanks Bill) and I got to meet a lot of really interesting people who were very welcoming for a visiting undergrad diaper-baby like myself.
It was novel, overwhelming, euphoric, entrepreneurial, terrifying and exciting and fun.
The big thing for me was not simply that I was asked to be a data monkey - I would have been satisfied with just that - but that I was treated as a team member. I was up against a nearly vertical learning curve trying to understand the nature of academia, the form and function of excel's functionality and grasping the data set such that we could produce something of merit. In spite of this (or maybe because of it), Rob, Bill, Ken and Jaime were generous enough to help me feel like I actually had something to contribute to the team's thought process and strategy for putting the presentation together. When I spoke, they listened, took me seriously and responded as such. They were patient with my constant blunderings and I always felt like they saw me as a competent value-add to the team.
Going forward it looks like I'll be doing more of the same work for the team on other research projects as it appears that I do a good enough job to be kept around - and it turns out that I actually like doing research.
It's one thing to be handed the opportunity of a lifetime - it's whole other thing entirely when the team chooses to see you as the person that you could become and creates a space for you to live into. This experience, the overwhelming feeling of belonging and confidence is huge gift that I simply cannot put into words.
Thanks to everyone for their encouragement and patience as I slogged through the ups and downs in an attempt to 'get it done.'
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