I have the second-most useless college degree one can get.No, not the M.S. Statistics I just got from ASU! Rather, my Bachelor of Music … in Orchestral Trumpet Performance. At least it’s not Bagpipe Performance!After discovering the hard way that the trumpet graduates each year literally outnumber by orders of magnitude the orchestra job openings, I drifted into IT. Before long, I was busy with database work as an independent contractor. Fast-forward to 2020, and I had my own small business, doing interesting research and development (and maintenance) database work, mostly for a single mid-sized restaurant company. (I’ve stayed active in the community orchestra scene.)The first couple weeks of the COVID shutdowns, we thought we’d weather the storm … until everything went on life support and my “services could no longer be afforded.”Adrift and afraid of my prospects for starting up again after the dust settled (in weeks, months … years?) and with the help and encouragement of my wife, I did a lot of career searching. One field kept rising to the top: statistics. Even better, ASU offers a 30-hour master’s program. Three semesters plus a summer class; how bad could it be?The catch, of course, is that the prerequisites amounted to a B.S. Statistics. And, not only did I lack all of them … I didn’t even know what a derivative was, let alone what to do with it after taking one.So, I crammed Khan Academy to pass the placement exam for Calc 270 … and I’ve been holding on to the safety bar of the roller coaster for dear life ever since.And what an adventure! I’ve learned so many amazing things about so many fields — especially the math and statistics, of course, but … quantum mechanics! Climatology! Pitch framing in baseball! Real-time neonatal cardiovascular monitoring! AI language translation! I even built a neural network that predicts the flavor profile of a cup of coffee given a gas chromatography / mass spectroscopy analysis of the beans … and, oh-by-the-way, designed the experiment and did most of the data collection (and all the analysis) by myself. And (with plenty handholding from the professor for the shallow water equations) created a supercomputer simulation of twin tropical cyclones. And …… and the degree is done, but I don’t want the ride to stop.So, if you’re trying to discover cool new things about how the universe works or working to make the world a better place (or both!), and you need help using the latest modern techniques to squeeze meaning out of too much (or too little) data … won’t you consider letting me join your team?