Week 3 of my #MeritAmerica Data Analytics cohort and I'm pretty impressed with the many angles of attack that Merit comes at you to make sure you feel supported. We are constantly filling out feedback surveys wanting us to ask any questions, share our struggles and make suggestions. We're encouraged to write notes of support to other learners and tell them what we appreciate about them. They've even enrolled all the students in a wellness website (WellConnect) which offers counseling, legal and financial resources, fitness, life skills, student success courses and mental health toolkits.
When I was looking into applying to this program, there were quite a few Google searches centered around "Is Merit America a scam" or "Is Merit America worth it". There weren't many answers out there. I would have liked some student reviews and that's why I thought I'd detail what my experience has been like here and on my blog. You can certainly learn data analytics on your own with the many free or low-cost resources on the internet and I seriously considered going that route. But from inside the cohort, even on week 3, I'd say yeah, Merit America is working for me.
For instance, tonight I attended an alumni Q & A panel. Two of the panelist had literally just graduated in May and one a year ago. All of them had landed jobs in their field and were full of excellent advice about getting through the program, interviewing and actually changing their lives and becoming what they dreamed of being. It was really inspiring to see, and I especially appreciated one former data analyst student, Morgan Mitchell, sharing that she was hit hard by imposter syndrome at first, until she sat in on meetings where she realized that she could not only answer all the questions, but even knew more than some of the stakeholders about the data.
Having someone who has been down the road slightly ahead of you is good for all of us. But finding even a single mentor can be a challenge when you're brand new to a field and don't have any connections. As a later-in-life career-changer, having access to this many coaches, supporters and mentors is one of the main reasons doing the Merit program has already been totally worth it.
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