Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS
Education
Why sleep should be every student’s priority
Excerpts from article by Christine Ro, published in BBC Future
It’s hard to overstate the benefits of a night’s rest for human memory, and neuroscientists are just beginning to understand why. Jakke Tamminen has plenty of students who do that very ‘student-y’ thing of staying up all night right before an exam, in the hope of stuffing in as much knowledge as they can. But that’s the worst thing you can do.
Tamminen is an expert on how sleep affects memory, specifically the recall needed for language. Sleep learning in the hopes that playing a language-learning recording during sleep would imprint itself into the brain subliminally and they’d wake up speaking Latin – is a myth.
But sleep itself is essential for embedding knowledge in the brain, and the research of Tamminen shows us why. In his research project, participants learn new vocabulary, then stay awake all night. Their memory of those words is compared after a few nights, and then after a week.
Even after several nights of recovery sleep, there is a substantial difference in how quickly they recall those words compared to the control group of participants who didn’t face sleep deprivation. Sleep is really a central part of learning, even though you’re not studying when you sleep, your brain is still studying. You can’t really get the full impact of the time you put into your studies unless you sleep.
Nightly rhythms
There’s a genetic component to how many sleep spindles we have. There’s also a genetic basis to our internal clocks, which tell us when it’s time to go to sleep and wake up. Adhering to these hard-wired cycles is necessary to reaching our peak cognitive performance.
Michael W Young, who was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine for his work on clock genes explains that for optimal functioning – whether at school, work, or other areas of life – “what you want to do is to try to recreate a rhythmic environment”.
Power naps
The circadian rhythm’s role in adult learning is unquestionable, but its importance may be particularly pronounced in childhood.
Children have more slow-wave sleep than adults which may be why kids learn quickly. A child sleep lab in Germany investigates the role of sleep in consolidating children’s memory. Monitoring what happens in children’s brains during sleep, and how much information they retain before and after sleep, shows that sleep helps with accessing implicit knowledge and making it explicit. Adults can also call upon this kind of information learned during the day.
The effects are stronger in early childhood because the brain is developing, in practical terms, children need to sleep during the day to remember everything that they have to learn. Daytime naps in young children have been shown to be really important for vocabulary growth, generalisation of the meaning of words and abstraction in language learning. Sleep continues to be important for memory and learning throughout the lifetime, though.
Not only does sleep help with accessing this information, it also changes the way this information is accessed. This makes brains more flexible at retrieving information. But it also makes them better at extracting the most significant parts of it. Memory gets transferred in a way that the most important information is remembered.
So, following your next intense Duolingo session, it’s a good idea to sleep on it. You may be surprised the next morning by how much you’ve absorbed!
Career
How to get your first job in Data Science without work experience
Excerpts from article by Madison Hunter, published in KD Nuggets
Whether you’re a new graduate, someone looking for a career change, the data science field is full of jobs that tick nearly every box on the modern worker’s checklist. Working in data science gives you the opportunity to have job security, a high-paying salary with room for advancement, and the ability to work from anywhere in the world.
Companies are often looking for candidates with 20 years of work experience. So, if you’re a new graduate looking for a job, or someone eyeing career change but without the relevant experience, it can be tricky.
That isn’t reason to become discouraged. While many data science jobs require work experience, there are many ways to create your own work experience that will make you an eligible candidate for these careers. All you need is a little creativity, grit, and perseverance.
It’s not about what you know. It’s about who you know and who knows you.
Google “the importance of networking”, and you will be flooded with articles from all the major players on why networking is one of the most important things you can do for your career. While networking is a phenomenal way to get insider knowledge on how to become successful in a particular career, it can also serve as a mutually beneficial relationship later on down the road. It’s important to make a few acquaintances while you’re going through university, to attend networking events and actually talk to people there, and to put yourself out there so recruiters begin to know your name.
Become a writer and contribute to a personal blog or a major publication.
Data scientists are natural storytellers thanks to their ability to turn massive data sets into compelling visualisations that tell stories to the masses. So it only makes sense that aspiring data scientists should write about their work to demonstrate their communication skills to future employers. Many data scientists have touted the benefits of starting a blog or writing on a platform like Medium.
Articles you’ve written become part of your professional portfolio and give recruiters insight into your comprehension of particular concepts. Not only will they see that you’ve been able to build a following of people who trust and value your work, but they will also be able to see that you’re willing to contribute knowledge to further the lives and careers of fellow data scientists. Furthermore, publishing on a website that pays you for your work tells recruiters that people value your knowledge.
Become a freelance data scientist and build up your own consulting business.
Instead of constantly fighting an uphill battle, go with the flow, and create your own data science consulting business. Its discouraging when you’ve sent off a hundred resumes only to get rejection letters and radio silence in return. So, if no one will hire you, hire yourself! Freelancing is easily one of the most terrifying things people can do to make money, and it’s definitely not for everyone but it’s a fair alternative.
If you have the skills and the confidence, take on some freelance clients. The beauty of hiring yourself is that if you finally get a job offer from one of your coveted companies thanks to the real-world experience you’ve been able to accumulate, you can walk away from freelancing at any time.
Work on your own projects to showcase your talents.
Data Science is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on solving problems and gathering information. So it makes sense that an employer wouldn’t want to hire anyone who hasn’t solved any problems or who hasn’t been able to draw any conclusions from a data set.
By creating your own projects, you show employers that you have that innate curiosity that is required for data scientists to be successful in their work. Not only that, many employers in tech request to see your project portfolio so they can see the quality of your work before they hire you. A quick search will lead you to hundreds of articles full of different data science projects to lend you inspiration.
Intern, volunteer or do pro bono work to get valuable industry experience.
Interning, volunteering, or doing pro bono work, are three of the best ways to get the necessary work experience that many companies are looking for. Not only do these allow you to gain real-world experience using real-world data, but it also shows that you’re a team player who earned their work experience the hard way without pay. If the company you work for is willing to compensate you with a glowing review on your LinkedIn profile or a reference letter, even better.
For anyone entering a new field, be it a fresh graduate, someone seeking a career change having a lack of work experience can be a daunting situation to overcome. There are tons of opportunities out there for you to gain work experience as long as you’re willing to take them on.
(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)
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