Life out of work

There are many things to say about everyone’s life on earth. Here are a few things about mine, which is quite ordinary. You can skip this part if you’re not interested in my life outside work. I’m not going to make it personal, really ;).

I will briefly present here what drives my current life, from my birth until today, and the different main changes I encounter, which could be described as life stages. Before continuing, I leave you with a quote from Sir Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, introducing the power you spread and have if you know yourself and your loved ones well.

The greatest traveller is not the one who has gone around the world 10 times. But the one who has gone around himself only once. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Short Bio

I spent my childhood in the idyllic countryside near Toulouse, in the southwest of France. My father was a farmer and my mother worked in a high school. From childhood I was fascinated by nature and the world around us, and my grandparents helped to cultivate this interest by sharing their own love of studying the things around us, such as birds, fishing and insects. I could spend hours marvelling at little things, which are actually very important when you realise what they really mean.

Growing up on a farm was a gift that shaped my path to where I am today. This includes the values taught there, such as respect for others, which was strongly shared in my mother’s upbringing, but also a taste for hard work to get things done and sometimes a summary of what to eat at night. After secondary school, I moved to Toulouse as a boarder at the lycée before entering the classes préparatoires. I finally ended up at ENSEEIHT, an engineering school where I studied various sciences that I really enjoyed. No matter where I went, I took advantage of the different bridges present to build up more knowledge (often going out of one’s comfort zone), through other engineering schools for example, or more or less personal opportunities (one of the last ones was the exchanges with international politicians on the future of the oceans in Lisbon for the UN summit for example).

I am fascinated by the movement of the world around us. This movement is about nature, about societies, about climate disasters, but also about the advances of technological companies to improve our lives. It’s a complex mix for most of our societies, capitalists, who sometimes have to face the music. I’m very interested in immersing my mind in studying these aspects.

Now, thanks to the PhD I’m in, I’ve been able to rekindle my passion for coding and deepen my knowledge in the areas of deep learning and data science, which I had not explored much before. This motivates me even more as I understand that these skills are highly valued in today’s job market, and I hope to find the right company to develop and apply them in the near future. I hope that my personal qualities can be put to good use in my possible future professional situations.

Upcoming project

Notes If you would like to work with me on these following projects (in the table), do not hesitate to let me know. Good team working will improve them.

Public to do list

• create my personal website
• do a lot of things (easy and harder) by myself to learn new skills
• do sports and have cool hobbies
• improve my ability to sleep and recover to perform better during the day
• learn every day, from failures to successes
• smile going to work
• work one day in a big tech company
• write this list :)
• write a blog
• write a novel
• write a song (of course I will not sing, don’t worry)

So, out of work?

Always learning and resting !

• I love developping new Python skills everyday in or out of work.
• If I am not behind a computer, 90 (+/-4) % of chances that I am:
  1. surfing
  2. reading novels or technical books about machine learning techniques or finance
  3. doing yoga
  4. playing handball or volleyball
  5. fishing
  6. snorkeling
  7. sleeping
• I want to learn new languages usefull for a data scientist (Javascript, SQL - already learn in classes préparatoires but a bit forgotten)

Quotes that I like

“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.” —Mark Twain

This is a good quote. Sometimes you want to do a lot of things in your head, but you can’t achieve them in real life. Write a story board about your projects, your ideas and start with the small steps to reach the big ones. I think this is an interesting mindset, very useful in many areas of life.