The Evolution of a Scientist

My name is Ryan Scribner and I am a student at General Assembly in their Data Science Immersive Remote program. Before joining GA, I was a Geologist in the oil and gas industry for more than ten years. I started working in the field looking under a microscope all day. As my career progressed, so did the technology used to drill oil wells. Before I knew it most of the Geology was done with computers that collected all kinds of interesting data. The microscope became less and less important. Eventually I was able to do my job at home, comparing Gamma Ray readings from one well to another to pinpoint our location within a matter of feet. Watching how quickly my industry evolved, I began to think about how important computers were becoming in this modern world. I know what you’re thinking, how old is this guy? I grew up in the age of computers, but they just haven’t always been such an integral part of every industry. The old guys taught me how to look at rocks and described how they used to draw their maps by hand. That just blew me away. Nowadays an oil rig is like an office building with computers, phones and all the normal amenities of everyday life. And in ten short years Geologists were all but replaced by computers. As one of my mentors used to tell me “Ryan, you have to keep evolving, or you will go extinct”. So I decided I was going to learn how to be a Geologist who looks at computers. I was going to learn about how important computers have become in our daily lives, not just in drilling holes in the ground.

I had already started studying computer science in my spare time. I had been watching my wife for years develop her career in computer science. Along her journey, I met several people who had made a nice career for themselves. I started to realize that it may have been a blessing in disguise that the unstable world of oil and gas had finally caught up with me. I started studying full time on my own realizing that data was the new most valuable commodity. One of my wife’s former colleagues took me under his wing and taught me SQL. I was amazed at how much data could be utilized after coming from only using Microsoft Excel basically by hand my entire career.

After getting my feet wet, I started learning about the “cloud” which again was an amazing discovery to me. I heard people talk about it, but didn’t really understand how or where all our music was coming from anymore. “It’s in the cloud!” I started to explore AWS and got my first certification on my own. From there I kept researching, to find the most useful and “user friendly” computer language I could learn. Especially after starting my computer education in SQL, I thought there must be an easier way to work with data on a large scale. This is when I discovered Python, and it is truly amazing everything it’s used for this day and age.

These days, as I learn more and more about computers and their languages I don’t know exactly what I want to do with my knowledge. There are so many options nowadays, literally almost any company or industry you can think of uses data anymore. The first idea that comes to mind is, can I teach a computer to be a Geologist? How does that old saying go? “If you can’t beat em… Join em!”