Discovering My Love for Data at WGU
By Daniel Thomson, WGU alumnus, B.S. Data Analytics
Daniel Thomson is a principal business analyst at a major hospital in Texas. He earned a B.S. in Data Analytics from WGU in 2025.
When I was working as a pharmacy technician at a hospital in Columbus, Ohio, the pharmacists started asking me for reports that didn’t exist, so I would try to put those together. I taught myself how to do it and discovered I liked developing reports.
I wanted to further my career, so I enrolled in the software development degree program at WGU. One day during my weekly meeting with my program mentor, she said to me, “You know all you ever talk about is data and data analytics. I’m not trying to force you to do anything, but I think the right move for you is to move to the data analytics program.” I hadn’t thought of that before, but with her guidance and further explanation, I switched programs. All my program mentors were very direct and passionate about helping me.
I remember during the onboarding process my advisor laid out the commitment that I would have to make to finish my degree. He asked me if my fiancée was supportive of me earning a college degree. He explained that with a very big commitment, I wasn’t going to make it without her support. She was with me every step of the way, and he was right about how much that mattered. It was hard, but it was definitely worth it. I just kept the goal in mind of finishing.
Academic Rigor Builds Confidence
My job was very demanding at the time, and the classes were not cookie-cutter courses. A course about data structures and algorithms was probably the hardest class I took. In it, I learned concepts I had never seen or thought about that are not very intuitive. It took me a few times to pass the test, but each time I tried, with the support of my instructor taking extra time to help me learn the material, my scores improved. During this time, if I wasn’t working, I was studying for that class. And finally, on my last attempt, I nailed it.
The course turned into my passion. Because of that course and the instructor, now I’m obsessed with data structures and algorithms. Those concepts are the underlying basis of everything I do now at work. WGU courses give you an advantage, because they build in you the confidence to excel at work.
I remember one Python course for which the exam was 15 problems that you had to code in Python with no references, and you had four hours to do it. You couldn’t make a single mistake—not even a wrong character—you had to get every single line right. So, you can imagine the anxiety of that, and four hours is a long time. But I really needed that test of my abilities to build my confidence in knowing how to come up with solutions. Now when they give me a task at my job and they say, “hope you have enough time to do this,” I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll have it done by Friday.”
What I like about the WGU data analytics program is all the courses that are geared towards programming, because you’re going to need it. For example, at my former job, I built a terminal dashboard from scratch in Python. It queried databases directly with little overhead, so we could get all the data we needed up-to-the-minute in real time, for free. It was one of those examples where leadership didn’t know what they wanted until I showed them my solution.
Innovating with Robotics
After the pharmacy job, I moved to another department as a business analyst for a fleet of automated guidance vehicles in the hospital. These supply chain robots travel around the floors of the hospital to pick up trash in carts and deliver them. After operating in the hospital for 20 years and with 110 vehicles, it’s the largest, oldest running hospital system like that in the U.S. There aren’t a lot of people with experience running a system like that.
After I finished my WGU Bachelor of Science in Data Analytics, I was recruited by a hospital in Texas that wants to be the most innovative with supply chain and environmental services robots by 2030. They were very interested in my experience, but they also needed somebody with data analytics and programming skills, which my degree provided. They hired me as a business analyst to help guide them on how to build out the system.
As the principal business analyst, I’m planning the entire supply chain and robotic automated system. This approach is unusual, because normally the IT department at a hospital is an afterthought. Instead, this hospital is being built by the IT department.
Looking back at the leap from building basic pharmacy reports to helping a team map out a robotic supply chain, I realize it came down to mastering the fundamentals. To anyone considering WGU’s data analytics program, understand that the struggle you face in the coursework isn’t just a hurdle; it is the entire point.
When it takes multiple tries to pass data structures or you are staring down a grueling Python exam, you aren’t just learning to code. You are building the muscle memory for how to solve hard problems. There are no shortcuts. You put your head down, do the reps, and lean on your mentors. WGU gives you the framework, but the grit you build in those difficult moments is what actually prepares you for the real world. If you embrace the hard work, you earn the absolute confidence to help build whatever comes next.
