I came to MTSU in 2019 from Lexington, Kentucky and got my B.S. in Audio Production in December 2023. I decided to return to MTSU to study Data Science in October 2024, and it has been an incredible experience. In my classes, I’ve learned extremely valuable skills in programming, analysis, statistics, and business intelligence. Despite this, my first love has always been (and will always be) music. I play in multiple bands, go on tour, produce and mix songs for artists in the Nashville area, and can probably be found at small indie rock or hardcore/metal shows.
I decided to study Data Science due to the number of opportunities the field has to offer. The term “data science” conjures images of parsing through massive amounts of data and finding secret patterns that it has to hide. While there is an element of this, it’s also so much more. There are so many specialties and focuses within the world of data that include machine learning, statistics, and more.
While I’ve flourished in the Data Science program at MTSU, I wanted to pursue an internship and gain experience outside of the classroom. While looking for opportunities, I wanted to find something related to the music industry. I had sent inquiries and applications to labels and publishing agencies, but nowhere was responding to me. While I was looking for an opportunity, my girlfriend, who also works in audio and music, told me about a non-profit called Book More Women.
Book More Women works with major festivals in an effort to get more women, non-binary, and other under-represented people on to their roster. During my time with them, I had many different responsibilities. I was tasked with maintaining their database, adding artists to it, finding new ways to streamline the use of the database, and contributing to their reports of major festivals. Additionally, I had a few special projects where I had to scrape their Instagram account to create a database of their posts, and was tasked with writing a report comparing the 2025 and 2026 festival seasons to be published onto their Substack. For both of these projects, I had exported their spreadsheets from Excel, and loaded them into a Jupyter Notebook where I was able to get insights by using pandas, numpy, matplotlib, and seaborn.
This experience has taught me incredible skills. The first of which being to not be afraid to ask for help. There were a few times where I had to ask my team members to take over on an assignment for me because I had other responsibilities, and there is absolutely no shame or defeat in needing a helping hand. Next, I learned that there is an immense amount of resources out there for help with Python and using APIs. I had written a program that could scrape the Instagram account and save what I needed into a CSV file, but it wasn’t working. So, instead of trying to keep making it work, I had decided to use an online tool that would do it for me, and then clean the CSV from there; it’s important to work smarter, not harder. Finally, my biggest takeaway was the importance of clear communication amongst the team. There were times where I was bogged down with pre-existing assignments and personal responsibilities. This caused me to not take on additional assignments, so I communicated this to my supervisor. She completely understood, let me finish the work I had, and then gave me my next task. By doing this, I was a lot more receptive to her feedback and was excited to be given another job. When I graduate and begin my career, this is something I will make known to my employer: that I value clear communication above anything else.
For students seeking out internships, don’t give up. I know it can be daunting to put yourself out there, but experience in the field will teach you more than any class will. College is the time to make mistakes, so let yourself stumble. By making mistakes and pushing yourself, you are teaching yourself how to be more responsible and adding more tools into your toolbox. While seeking out and completing an internship isn’t required, I highly recommend it for the professional experience.