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Data Science: My First Internship Experience

There’s no substitute for hands-on experience. But for most students, real world experience is hard to come by. My experience serving as Global Intern at TakenMind Technologies.


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Salim Oyinlola

2 years ago | 3 min read

Although the general consensus is that 2020 was not the best of years as everything ceased from normality, it was a year of self-development and online learning without limits for me. A year that afforded me the opportunity to learn skillls and make strides towards building my data science career. I started my data science career midway through 2020 and by the end of the year, after taking a plethora of online courses, I felt I was ready to apply this knowledge in the real-world. It struck me that all the knowledge I gained off the lectures would be useless unless I learnt some practical skills that are actually used in the industry. In light of this, I applied for the ‘Data Analytics and Visualization’ Intership as part of the Global Internship 2021 Program for the January 1, 2021 to January 28, 2021.

The Certificate of Completion awarded to me at the end of my internship.

TakenMind Technologies is an online technology platform that empowers education and focuses collaborative learning that currently serves aspirants in data science and analytics. The program was designed such that I was to contribute to build an analytical solution to an existing problem with interns from 13 different countries. The four-week internship was definately life-changing as it paved a new path in my data science career, one where I got to build systems from scratch to improve existing structures. The journey started when I received an auspicious mail stating I qualified for a four-week internship from a multi-national organization called TakenMind Technologies. Quite frankly, this news came as a surprise as I could not even recall applying for the program, considering I had just begun my data science career and I applied for numerous entry-level data analytics internships.

To say the internship was challenging and tasking would qualify for the understatement of the decade. Not only was it my first major gig in the data science domain, but it also coincided with my resumption back to school following an eight-month break due to the novel coronavirus outbreak. Despite knowing how arduous juggling both would be, my joy knew no bounds on receiving the mail. All this combined for what seemed like a make-it-or-break-it period in my life.

“ Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” — Robert F. Kennedy

Here I was just about to get hands-on real-life data science experience. More so than that, the program was in tandem with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Quality Education) which aligns with my interest in social impact. The main beneficiaries of the said program includes second world and third world countries, with the program being widespread across Asia and Africa. Whilst serving as a partner to the United Nations (#SDGAction26437), the TakenMind initiative is aimed at providing technical training in fields of computer education and managerial trainings via internship experiences — apart from the University studies.

During the four weeks whilst serving as a global intern in the data analytics of TakenMind technologies, I;

⦁ Gained useful knowledge on data analytics and visualization.

⦁ Carried out several assignments and projects using NumPy, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, Seaborn Libraries in Python using Google Colab and Jupyter Notebook.

⦁ Implemented ML algorithms ranging from Logistic Regression to Decision Tree Classifiers for the projects given.

Overall, this internship experience was a wonderful one and I look forward to building myself on this newly found path. Also, I would love to appreciate the TakenMind team and the United Nations for organizing this program. Starting off with an excellent eight-hour study kit, we interns were required to send in regular reports which was in sync with my passion for writing. If I was to sum the internship experience in one word, I think “worthwhile” pretty much encapsulates it. At the end of the internship, You could imagine my delight when at the end of the internship I received a Recommendation Letter from the Global talent at TakenMind, Mr. Siranjeevi.

Written by Salim O. Oyinlola

Engineering Undergrad. Student, University of Lagos



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Salim Oyinlola

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence enthusiast


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