I had every intention of writing this post last Wednesday night, but as a celebration for finishing the program, my partner took me out to dinner, and then we settled down to play that new game where you play as a kitty, Stray.

It was very important, I rode in lots of buckets and meowed at a lot of things.

I’m not going to lie, I spent a lot of time– including on my vacation– stressed out toward the end. There was a lot that needed to be done and sometimes things weren’t always clear, the stakeholder would change their mind, or we weren’t sure we would be able to bring to life what they really wanted.

I don’t know how much time I actually spent worrying over the entire process and how we would be able to do this for them, for any dataset that they had and wanted to churn through what all of us had created. Then, Kristen said, I have Tableau Prep Builder, it does everything for you right in Tableau.

Sorry, what? That’s a possibility?

I hadn’t even realized that could be done until she showed me. It was a desktop function, and I’ve only ever used Tableau public, so of course I’d never heard of it

Overall, the experience was one of a kind and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I really am glad I got to be part of this, and I’m happy with the work I did at the end of the day.

It definitely wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows– there were hard times and quiet times. That’s just how it goes. I think that’s why I value it so much, because it gave me real experience with working in a team and relying on other people. It showed me what working with a stakeholder is like, and how important it is to have meetings and make sure everyone communicates and is on the same page.

My biggest contribution to the project was the final visualization view, a dashboard with different vizzes that could be controlled by several filters and parameters on the side.

Oh yeah, I learned what parameters were, and how to apply them. That was fun.

Two of my teammates, Kristen and Arundhati, had done a lot of work on the solutions brief and the pivot table view, and I took some of that functionality to apply it to my viz. Across the span of an hour, they helped me put my vision into a viz and we had our rough draft. Over the course of a few more days, it was subject to more picking and changes that brought it to the final, polished product.

It was also incredible to have made friends along the way, too. Emine from the portfolio builder class was also in this program, and it was so nice to work with her again in my team. Krishna, Arundhati, and Alexandria were all on my team as well and I loved working with them just as much. It was just neat to pick their brains on different things because each of us had different skill sets we brought to the table.

In the final week, we broke out of our teams and all of us worked together. We had a mock presentation the day before with a couple of people from the other team that I hadn’t gotten to talk with personally before, but they were both amazing. Zoe showed me a video I still think about and have trouble not laughing at, and Shine talked about her sweet kitties.

What was that phrase? It was the friends we made along the way?

But more seriously, it was the viz I created and the work we did together and listening to the stakeholder and suffering through a midterm presentation that ended in us being told we didn’t have the right idea. It was the good parts and the bad, and I am so lucky to have had the experience.

If you’re also a member with Women in Data and you’re considering applying for the residency program cohort coming up, do it. It’s valuable skill and it’s an amazing opportunity.

A lot of other people will be applying as well, so don’t be sad if you don’t get in right away: apply for the next one!

None of this is sponsored, by the way, it’s just my feelings and experience, but I hope you take something away from this post, and I hope you enjoyed it!

Next week I’ll probably spend some time talking about what I’ve learned recently about outliers.

Until then, I hope all of your cleaning is swift and easy, and that your projects turn out perfect!