James Wilson

2024 Recap

Dec 31, 2024
14 minute read

Why a Yearly Review?

“‘To understand where you’re going, you must first know where you’ve been.’”

In an attempt at boiling down my year into a phrase, I’ve decided to compile a review comprised of the major aspects of my life as of late: Career & Education, Consumption & Creativity, and Exploration & Volunteering.

Career & Education

Career

The first half of the year I wrapped up my time at Capgemini. Having finished on the Meta account, I was promoted to Data Science Manager and tasked with leading propensity score model efforts for T-Mobile. While I enjoyed my 3.5 years at Cap, the opportunity to work in-house for a local company and be a part of a hybrid, dedicated data science team was too alluring to pass up. I started as a Senior Data Scientist at Warner Bros. Discovery this late summer, working for the Max platform’s Marketing and Content division. It has been delightful to work in person with others and get to build interpersonal relationships in a meaningful way. Outside of work, we often do lunches, pickleball, board games, and seasonal dinners. In my role, I am getting to actively cross-collaborate with data vendors, marketing stakeholders, and our data engineering team to produce much-needed insights and strategy on how we are marketing all of our great content.

Education

As of this past week, I am halfway done with my master’s in Computer Science through Georgia Tech. This online program is nothing if not rigorous and time-consuming, with my class load averaging around 18-19 hours per week on top of work during the spring and fall semesters. This requires a significant amount of time spent by myself reading, programming projects, and studying materials for quizzes and final exams. During the Spring I took Network Science and AI Ethics, in the Summer I took Software Development Processes, and this Fall I took the Machine Learning capstone to start my specialization main pillar classes.

I am thankful to have joined a Discord server for the program this past Fall and met a great group of individuals across LA who are taking the same classes as me! This was a needed support system during the rigorous Machine Learning course, one of our program capstone classes.

Consumption & Creativity

Speaking with friends as of late, one of the main elements of your adult life seems to be finding a balance between being creative and being a consumer. There is some gray between these concepts, and finding what works for you to bring personal fulfillment is key. As seen in this section, a goal of mine is to identify more consistent creative outlets in the future.

Consumption

Given how many different ways we ‘consume’ in the 21st century, I’ve broken these out as bullet points:

  • I read 14 books to reach my goal of 12 books for the year! Follow me on Goodreads. I was a part of a book club at the start of the year that helped with reading the Red Rising series at a very fast pace, though it is a great read on its own. Book clubs are great, except when you are in your master’s like I am.

  • Concerts! Grateful to have so many friends that share my love for music.
  • Coachella
  • Fred Again @ The Coliseum
  • Osheaga in Montreal
  • Bleachers @ The Greek Theatre

  • MICHELLE @ the Roxy

  • Running! I didn’t run any races this year, but I consistently attended Venice Run Club. I tracked over 500 miles on Strava, so not an insane year but steady, consistent maintenance.

  • Hobbies are the main cut to consumption with grad school. I didn’t golf, surf, or ski as often as I would have liked to. I did explore new concepts like racing sailboats in Marina Del Rey with an old coworker and playing pickleball in a competitive manner with current coworkers.

  • I watched maybe 12 movies and even less television in 2024, again given less time and a lost AMC A-List subscription for the second half of the year.

  • Board games have been a highlight, playing lots of Splendor and Lost Ruins of Arnak with friends. Hoping to play more advanced games like Go and chess in 2025 more often. LinkedIn’s Queen’s Game is also addicting.

  • I did not buy a new car, as my 2008 Honda Civic still has life in it at 170,000 miles! This may need to be upgraded to a used vehicle in 2025, however.

  • Too much coffee shop americanos, mainly at Intelligence in Venice and the Canal Market down the street from me.

Creativity

I spent a full year living on the canals in Venice, taking walks often. While running is consumption, walking is creative. I find my mind is more deliberately focused after a walk than a run. The exposure to creative thought has been a big change living in this art and music-driven community. If not for the demands of education, I would have liked to participate more actively, especially in local events like the Venice Canal Annual Art Show.

  • I would like to spend more time on my blog, writing about interests like backpacking, philosophy, and machine learning. This will be my only post of 2024.

  • One fun thing I helped create was an ice cream taste test competition for co-workers at work this Friendsgiving, where we reviewed different ice creams in Los Angeles blindly and ranked the best one. McConnels is the undefeated best by our review.

Explorations & Volunteering

Explorations

Despite being in a master’s program and working full-time corporate jobs, I did make it a priority to continue exploring and satisfying my curiosity.

  • I solo-traveled through Japan for two weeks at the start of March, catching the end of the plum blossom and the start of the cherry blossom season. Traveling to a place where I had no understanding of the language, no connections, and no plans outside my own was… freeing and indulgent. Tokyo remains one of my favorite places to get lost, exploring Golden Gai countless times and moving to the beat of my empty stomach and curious mind. Talking with locals about Shohei Ohtani at 3 am over a beer was electric. I enjoyed going to tea ceremonies, hiking, and onsening in Hakone and finding ways to interact with the locals and tourists when possible. Kyoto and Osaka were also incredible, participating in a Hansen tiger baseball game and going to see the opening day of the Osaka sumo wrestling match.

  • Between jobs this past summer, I summited Mt. Whitney (mostly) by myself! After joining a Mt. Whitney permit exchange group on Facebook, I received an extra pass from a UCLA alum named Brian and started the ascent with him around 2 AM. A perfectly clear day provided wonderful conditions to climb. Brian suffered from altitude sickness on the ridgeline and had to turn back, leaving me to finish the final section. I also dealt with the altitude poorly, but some lovely ladies provided me with ginger candies that calmed my stomach and nerves and helped me to ascend at 1 PM. I then caught back up to Brian on the descent and helped him finish safely at 8 PM. Note to future self: Do not drive 4.5 hours home after Mt. Whitney on only a double cheeseburger and just pay $200 to sleep in Lone Pine.

  • This was the year of taking full advantage of my Canadian citizenship, visiting 7 different towns and cities throughout Canada with friends and family. I joined my parent’s road trip through the Canadian Rockies, seeing Kamloops, Jasper, Banff, and Calgary. I was able to go trail running through the Lake Louise area, treat my parents to a nice dinner and happy hour here and there, and go to the Calgary Stampede with our relatives and see the chuckwagon races. In late summer, my friend Pierce and I traveled to Montreal to explore the city’s food, bars, and music, along with the Osheaga music festival. We ran into my friend Danny as well, which was a blast. I then took a train to Ottawa to stay with my uncle Terry and check out the capital building he works in. Golf and BBQ galore whilst in town.

  • In the late fall, I traveled to Arizona with family for my cousin Nicole’s wedding. We rented a car and took a road trip to Sedona on my birthday, where my mom, grandma, and aunt surprised me for my birthday. We then stayed in Pine at an Airbnb and attended my cousin’s lovely rustic wedding. Overall, a nice trip to see distant family I wouldn’t see otherwise.

Volunteering

“‘For it is in giving that we receive.’”

– Peace Prayer attr. St. Francis

Giving back to organizations and sharing with others is important to me, having been raised a Catholic and finding such personalized charity to be an important cornerstone of society. Volunteering one’s time is in no way a competition or something to be ‘improved upon’; however, this year I realize I did a diverse amount of such work and hope to better paint a picture of my interests.

  • For the second time, I served as a judge for UCLA Statistics’ DataFest and donated $250 to the organization to continue my support of the educational work they do for undergraduate students. This is a great way to stay in contact with many of my friends who are now alumni, pursuing PhDs, or working for the department. I enjoy seeing how students tackle the problems they are tasked with year over year.

  • For the fourth (?) time as an alumnus, I volunteered with UCLA for the Alumni Association STEM Networking Night. I also served as an advisor for the SAA board. I had three alumni mentees, two a part of the UCLA Stats department and one a part of the official alumni program.

  • We raised $1,700 for the San Diego YoungLife chapter through the Wilson Family Golf tourney, which had 44 members participate this year. This was in honor of our late friend Carter Rhoad, who passed away tragically this past spring. This was the first year we incorporated donations into the tournament with great success.

  • Through WBD, I worked at a soup kitchen called Project Angel Food in Lincoln Heights for volunteer day. I got to help the head chef make a huge amount of food for local families and in-need persons looking for healthy meals to assist them. This was a great experience and reminds me of when we would work shifts at the Midnight Kitchen when I worked in DTLA for Ankura.

  • More of a flex than anything, but I brought 12 people for FREE to a Maggie Rogers concert. This is going in this volunteer section simply because this was an incredibly charitable move on my part to think to DM the Forum’s lead ticket saleswoman on LinkedIn for a discount. She is the true volunteer of the year.

  • As tradition, my father and I baked a combined total of 47 loaves of pumpkin bread for friends and family this year! This is the result of roughly 6-7 batches.

Lessons Learned

  • Solo traveling in moderation is really quite a fulfilling adventure and helps to strengthen one’s character and confidence. I have previously solo traveled in places like Croatia and taken smaller trips to specific locations, but Japan was my first time doing it for more than a week and in a place where English isn’t prevalent. Japan is the ideal location for solo travel, given its catering to the individual and ease of exploration and spontaneity. I will say that solo traveling shouldn’t be done too often, as I find that it is a bit spoiling in that you never have to worry about others. Sharing in trips is a huge aspect of what makes them fun!

  • Balancing work, study, and personal life has been a journey for me. Recruiting for a new role, learning a different job, tackling different graduate courses, dating and hanging out with friends, traveling, and spending time with family… all of this leads to a dedicated need for active time management and late-night work sessions. I do find that the best balance is to not put too much pressure on myself outside reasonable bounds and not create requirements that aren’t expressly asked of me.

  • Generally speaking, change is good. New friends, new experiences, new routines—it’s all important to the growth of life. Staying unstuck is the key to a fruitful life. From a machine learning perspective, though, one of my new mindsets when balancing all of this change has been to focus on trying to “change one variable at a time” in my chaotic model of a life. For example, when recruiting for a new job, I realized that while changing cities for a new job would be a fun experience, changing both at the same time with grad school would realistically throw me off my goal of graduating before 30. Therefore, I could only choose to change one of these variables and went with changing jobs instead of a move. I am happy with this decision as it has afforded me many benefits as expected.

What do I want to focus more on in 2025?

Career & Education

  • I’d like to carve out a more defined role on my team here at WBD and look into taking on an intern this summer for our team. Our software and modeling efforts could use some better integrated engineering perspectives with source control, automatic updates, and leveraging more of the Databricks stack.

  • I’d like to attend more in-person OMSCS and data events here in Los Angeles where possible. I will also aim to complete another 4 classes this year, as well as a few seminars to better round out my experience. Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Reinforcement Learning, and an elective are a few possibilities.

  • Overall, I’d like to be more intentional and disciplined with my routines and systems and try to get more work done during the week to lighten up my weekends where possible.

Consumption & Creativity

  • This may be the year I get a new car. I’ve been driving my Civic since… 2014?? Basically a decade in my Honda, and while I will still plan to drive it into the ground, a used SUV calls my name more and more.

  • As evident here, I’d like to write and blog more! I need to be better about just accepting the rough draft and not striving for perfection every time. Writing research papers for my machine learning capstone I think has given me more confidence in my writing abilities and trust in the process of producing in public. The goal will be to have a simple 3 blog posts by the end of the year.

Exploration & Volunteering

  • I’d like to train for another adventure, whether that be a half-marathon, triathlon, or simply summiting another backpacking peak. If anyone is interested in joining me, I am open to ideas! A marathon, while fun, requires just too much time for me at the moment realistically, so it will have to wait for another time.

  • Raising $2,000+ for the 5th annual Wilson family golf tournament and expanding its roster size would be really, really cool. Possibly for cancer research, given my grandma’s and mom’s recent struggles.