Coming from a small town, moving to London to start a new job at The Information Lab was daunting. One week in, sitting at a benched table at the TIL offices and surrounded by the chatter of ping-pong and laptop keyboards, I can report that I shouldn't have worried. Let me take you through the week.

Monday:

The morning dawned and I nervously shouldered a pre-packed bag of work-related items. Upon arriving at the office I was presented with another. The contents were these: book, mouse, notebook, headset, and laptop. The previous user of my laptop left a sticker reading 'Total Analytics Badassery'. Meanwhile, another came with the embossed label 'SAVE YOUR WORK'. The laptops are fast, and the morning was spent setting them up. Later, there was a talk delivered by the CEO, Tom, and introductions from Coaches and present members of The Data School.

Tuesday & Wednesday:

Training began in earnest. During these two days, I and my Alteryx-naïve cohort were schooled in data preparation. With the help of our coach, Ruth, we each made our first attempts at filtering, formulas, aggregation, joining, and parsing data in Alteryx.

Thursday:

Equipped with a new understanding of the fundamentals of data preparation, our next challenge was to apply this knowledge using a new program, Tableau Prep. Using this software we tackled data problems and uncovered the strengths of the two platforms.

Friday:

Upon arriving at the office we were presented with a challenge: (1) find and join a fresh dataset to that presented in our applications using Alteryx or Tableau Prep, (2) expand our application Vis using this new data, and (3) present this work at 13:30. After an initial bout of nerves, we each settled around the office and began tinkering. Fortunately for us, whilst this was our first independent work, our coaches were more than happy to help with troubleshooting. After presenting the morning's work, and riding on the high of our new abilities, we finished by watching an older cohort exhibit their work to a client. It had been a rewarding and often challenging week, but I shouldn't have worried and neither should you.