Philip Harman
Hi, I’m Philip, I’m from the United States, a student from the Master in Big Data Solutions at Barcelona Technology School.
What inspired you to study abroad?
I wanted to get my master’s degree specifically abroad because I could live the whole experience and get new cultural aspects as well as my regular studies.
How is living in Barcelona?
It’s great. The pandemic situation is what it is, but it’s still been a nice city to be in. It’s February and I was at the beach last weekend so that’s new for me coming from Washington.
How do you see yourself in future?
Working as a data scientist of course but specifically, I think it would be really cool to work in the public policy field. There’s a lot of opportunity with philanthropy work about the data for the good field. Working with a non-profit organization and that type of field would be interesting to me.
Are you developing new skills?
I think there are opportunities to get practice in my own time as well so that’s one thing that I’ve started doing. I’ve been talking to professors about it as well and working on my own portfolio, doing projects on the side focusing on data visualization and the communication side of it in addition to the more technically focused skills that we are learning in the classroom.
Why would you recommend Barcelona Technology School?
The professors have been really great. I went to a big school for my undergraduate and what’s different about this is that my cohort, there’s fifteen of us in total. I’ve learned a lot from my professors but also learning from my connections with other students. I think that’s something that I wouldn’t necessarily get at a bigger school so it’s great being able to personally know the other students and my cohort and know what their backgrounds are, what can I learn from them, so we definitely teach each other a lot which is been really positive.
Is this time abroad impacting your life?
Yes. It’s been really exciting, and again one of the things about being in a smaller program, especially in a program abroad it’s meeting students and people from Spain of course but meeting students from all over the world. From South America, different parts of Europe, from the middle east. One of my classmates is from South Korea so it’s a really wide distribution of students and it’s been really great kind of getting these different perspectives and I’ve learned a lot about history and events I’ve wasn’t really aware of that’s been a very perspective brothering experience.
How is your experience at Barcelona Technology School?
It’s been good. It’s a lot of information to take in and I think the best thing you can do is pick what’s interesting to you because data science is a massive field. There are tons of sub-disciplines you can go into if you want. What’s great here is that I feel the opportunity to learn about these different types of disciplines and have access to learn about the niches that I really want to focus on and learn about my own time.
