My thoughts on DataCamp's Associate Data Analyst in SQL Career Track

I started Data Camp's Associate Data Analyst in SQL career track at the end of March and expected it to take about 39 hours, since that’s what the estimate said. But in the end, it was closer to 45 hours and honestly, it was worth it. Not just because I finished the course or got the certification, but because of how much more clear SQL feels now, especially compared to when I was learning it for the first time during the Google Data Analytics course.

Learning the Order of Execution

One of the most helpful parts of this course was the way it explained concepts in a logical order. In particular, understanding the order of execution helped me finally get the difference between WHERE and HAVING. During the Google course, I couldn’t figure out why one worked and the other didn’t. It was never clearly explained that the filtering happens at different stages: WHERE filters rows before the grouping, and HAVING filters after. Once I understood the order of execution, it just clicked!

My Learning Style

A few times, a new concept was introduced along with its syntax and I understood how to write it, but I didn’t get when and why I’d ever use it. It wasn’t until later when we actually put the concept into practice, that it made sense. It got me thinking, maybe it would be more intuitive to present the problem first and then introduce the new tool that helps us solve it. It's not so much a criticism of the course but more about how I personally prefer to learn new concepts.

The Chapter That Needs a Revisit

Some chapters felt more overwhelming than others. I’ll definitely need to revisit the one on PostgreSQL extensions and full-text search. It was packed with new functions that I haven’t internalised yet but I'm not too worried. It feels more like a “learn it when you need it” area, and at least I now know they exist.

The Unnecessary Chapter

Not everything in the course felt like a step forward. The 10th course was surprisingly basic as it covered things I’d already gone through earlier on. It didn’t add much and I’m not sure if it was completely necessary...

Storytelling Revisited

Then came Course 11, which brought me back to familiar ground but in a good way. It reminded me of Storytelling with Data, a book I found incredibly useful and it was nice to revisit those principles from a new angle.

How to Present Your Work

I found Course 12 was especially helpful. It focused on how to communicate your analysis depending on the audience. This was something I’d always kind of winged in my precious case studies. I never knew how much detail to include, whether I should walk people through the full process or just present my findings. This course gave me some structure to follow and a better sense of what’s appropriate for different scenarios.

The Final Certification

Finally, I chose to complete the optional certification at the end, not because I thought it would impress any potential employers (since most don’t care about certificates), but because I wanted to test myself. It was like a final checkpoint.

The multiple choice test was supposed to take two hours which I finished in under 50 minutes. It revealed a few weak spots I’ll need to brush up on but overall, it went well.

Then came the timed case study. The task was to clean a dataset and query it to answer specific questions. I was surprised when I completed that in just 45 minutes. A month ago, I would’ve have no idea where to start but now, I was navigating a real database and extracting meaningful answers with confidence.

What's Next

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed learning SQL through this course. It's so satisfying to see how much progress I've made especially when I think back to how little I knew at the beginning. I’ve even started tackling some SQL problems on Leetcode, which has been a fun way to reinforce what I’ve learned. My next step is to apply everything I've learnt in a case study project that I can add to my portfolio and after that, I’ll be diving into Power BI!