Vacation. As in vacant?

About a year ago, I was translating an article by Walter Isaacson (CEO of Aspen Institute and, among others, author of Steve Job’s biography). The article started by describing how summers used to be for resting, but now summers are for work. There is probably some truth in that. But on the other hand, I have not had a real holiday in very long time. But that does not matter! There is interesting stuff to do and that is the most important part!

n essence, my life is focused around 3 main areas:
1. Peasron!
Pearson is an international FTSE 100 London-based company, which, for practical reasons, has its main market in North America. In Pearson, I have joined the Data Analytics and Visualization team for the summer. I have to say that despite Pearson having 37 thousand employees, the working atmosphere and culture is really good here and you actually build personal relationships with people in your team without any problems (unlike some Czech, little over one hundred people companies I have worked for).
Our team is nicely international: in the team of seven people we only have two people from the British Isles and I have always preferred this kind of atmosphere than the relatively more British Oxford (at least on the undergraduate level; our college of more than hundred people has fewer than ten international students). Plus Pearson has probably the most beautiful offices I have ever seen. Just see for yourself; this is cool:

(And yes: I have received a Mac. I love it! Sorry Windows.) In Pearson, I have learned many new things and I am constantly bombarded by new material, but everything is tremendously interesting: D3, Python, ElasticSearch and in the future maybe even Hadoop and Hbase. Other than that I had to sign an NDA, so I cannot unfortunately say what I am working on.

But the main reason why I mentioned that Peasron is international I have not yet revealed: Pearson is paying me to go to their American office in Boston in August! So I have lots to look forward to!

2. Independent Projects
During the school year I have perhaps indulged too much in online courses on Coursera.org: I have finished 4 courses already (Introduction to Finance, Computing for Data Analysis, Data Analysis and Social Network Analysis.) Coursera is constantly expanding not just by the number of coruses—now almost 400—offered but also how can you take these courses: for instance I have finished Social Newtork Analysis on Signature Track and even with the programming option. Over the summer, I carry on doing some courses, but there is a limit to everything.

3. Traveling!
Life does not consist of just work and learning and so I enjoyed a couple of days off during which I did not have (m)any tasks to finish and I have finally visited the enemy territory—Cambridge—which I have to admit is a charming city. I have also looked around London. The only problem of these trips is that I had to carry around approx. 35 kg of stuff with me everywhere, because I did not have a permanent place to stay. At least now I know why a right to shelter is a basic human right. (Disclaimer: Not to be taken seriously) Also I have seen Regent’s park and other beauties of London such as Sherlock’s house and I have seen many of my old friends, who I have not seen in ages. And there’s still a lot awaiting me.

In short, there is plenty of interesting stuff going on!


 

Prázdniny. Od slova prázdno?
Prázdniny. Od slova prázdno?

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