Final week's musings

I spent the majority of this week working on the Sentiment analysis code. Good news is that finally works!!
github: https://github.com/jayeetaroy/Text-analytics-Python/blob/master/Sentiment%20Analysis.ipynb

Bad news is that the semester is coming to an end.

It has been a very interesting semester. In a way, I think I learned a lot more than I would've learned in a traditional class. This last week was uncharacteristically smooth and with absolutely no chaos! I thought before starting this exercise, that I won't be able to finish it or maybe I won't be able to understand what's happening, or I might even have to scramble to finish all of it. But none of that happened! So surprising!

I think this method of self-study is a lot more effective than it gets credited for. Sure yes, I would've loved to have someone teach me all this, in a classroom, that way I would've wasted a lot less time being lost, but then I also won't have this sense of accomplishment. While reading all those Wenger papers, I was so focused on understanding the methodology, I did not really pay any attention to the impact this form of learning has on the on the person studying. I did not anticipate this surge if confidence, the skills of falling into a rabbit hole and then finding your way out on your own, and when you do succeed, the sense of achievement is overwhelming.

To take the example of this exercise of making the sentiment analyzer, I was able to implement the NB classifier with a lot more ease as compared to just the week before when I struggling and banging my head. It has also made appreciate the open community a whole more. The whole community supports anyone who wants to learn. One can find so many different types of blogs and examples for the same topic. Any question asked on the forums such as stack overflow or even the  Udemy discussion board, will be answered.

I was surely disappointed when I could not find any active meetups associated with NLP. But I think I might've struck gold with the Whiteboard Interview series hosted by PyLadies.

In all this has been a very interesting semester where I learned not just about the topics I wanted to but also about myself. That I think is the best form of learning. 

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