Hi, I'm Samira 👋. Welcome to the first post of Unstructured Data: The Human Factor.

My build write-ups are the structured data: clean, organized, code included. This series is everything that doesn't fit in a table. It's the career change, the imposter syndrome, being a nontraditional student about to graduate and head into a master's program, and figuring out who I am as a developer in real time.

Every Friday I'll lead with a word. I'm a lover of forgotten and rarely used words, and sometimes one of them says exactly what I've been feeling. Then I'll tell you the story behind it. Think of it as a journal I'm keeping in public, from three classes left all the way to wherever this goes. You're invited for the whole ride.

Here's where it starts.

Verisimilitude: the appearance of being true or real. As a word lover, I did not know how much that word could describe my life until right at this very moment. Three classes away from graduating, trying to build a brand out of thin air, and doing things that feel "adult." Really, that makes no sense.

For example, I started this entire journey into making the blogs and portfolio in 2024. I was trying to find a mentor, and the first thing she asked was, "How many projects do you have?" At that point: 0. "What about school projects?" Those were only theory, not shipped projects. So, feeling defeated and disheveled, I decided that is not the end of my story. So I got building, and boy did I build.

I started with Kaggle and discovered I hate Jupyter notebooks. Once I worked with Kaggle, I chose to start on the Titanic project and realized I don't really like the standard data science stuff. Yes, it is closer to what I want, but I am a programmer at heart, so I decided to learn what I could outside of the classroom and put it to good use.

My first attempt at this was getting a bunch of domains and making websites. I took the roadmap.sh course and started an HTML project, as it was recommended by my career advisor as a fun way to start to bridge my gaps. That became what I lovingly refer to as my baby, aka my portfolio. I use almost every tool on there, and at the moment I am writing this post using one I haven't told you about yet.

I am still working through this new space of transition and growth. Being so close to graduation, I am now looking to start doing the things I love before I move into my master's program. That is where a lot of this feeling like a fraud has come in.

In my dreamscape, I have an entire computer cocoon that I can work from and live doing projects that I am passionate about. And I have work to show, but I have no idea how to build a following, so that's why I am here to learn in a new way.

I know in theory I have the skills, the ability, the acumen. But then I look at how many others are in this space, all the things they have achieved in a field this saturated, with bodies of work that have been going since I have been alive, and I think: am I really able to compete? Am I different enough?

Then I go to my day job and see: yes, I am different enough. I know what is needed and how to make those changes, and I do it as often as I can. I love to help and support others, so I have built myself a role that can create that for others.

I have worked so hard to decide what should be real and what my profile should say, how can I get clicks, but I forgot that I am enough on my own, and my people will find me. Because I know I am not alone. I know there is another nontraditional undergrad excitedly terrified about the prospect of graduating, but actually terrified that they can't make themselves diverse. So if that is you, drop a comment or a message. Let's support each other and help find that space where we can vent, grow, bounce ideas, and build together.

I know this is not the typical post, but I would love to not only build friendships and collaborators, but create true community in this cold, confusing digital space.

So tell me: what's the gap between the life you have and the life you want right now? 💬

See you next Friday, with a new word.

✦ Ozurie: feeling torn between the life you want and the life you have. From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.

A note on how I wrote this one: I wrote it by hand in my notebook, then typed it in blind, without seeing the words or using backspace. AI helped fix my typos and put together the series welcome at the top. The story is all mine.

Want the technical side? My build write-ups live at blog.samira-ray.dev.