Julia's Journey – Notes from My Transition

From Humanities to Digital Analytics

When people think of digital analytics, they often imagine dashboards full of metrics, managed by someone with a technical background. However, analytics is also a way of thinking about people—their choices, their motivations, and the context behind their actions. That’s where my own path began: in the humanities.

I studied musicology and sinology, disciplines that deal with structure, meaning, and cultural depth. At the time, it didn’t feel connected to marketing or data at all. But over time I realized that the habits I developed—interpreting patterns, questioning surface meanings, and looking for context—are just as important in digital analytics as they are in research.

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From Interpretation to Insights

In classical Chinese, meaning often shifts with context. Reading a sentence is less about fixed translation and more about educated guessing and interpretation. Musicology, in turn, trains you to recognize musical patterns, structure, and meaning as it unfolds over time.

Those same skills are what I now use in digital analytics: identifying patterns in data, understanding the story they tell, and asking what drives people’s behavior. Metrics on their own are never the whole picture—they only become valuable when seen in context.

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Finding Stories in the Numbers

In a previous role, I worked with trade statistics. It wasn’t just about compiling numbers—it was about understanding their context. One example that stayed with me: in 2022, when Russian gas supplies were cut off, Germany sharply increased its imports from Norway. On the surface, it was just a shift in trade statistics. But in context, it told a much bigger story about politics, economics, and dependency.

Digital analytics works the same way. A click, a bounce, or a conversion isn’t just a number—it’s a signal of intent, curiosity, or hesitation. The real value comes from connecting these signals to marketing strategy: what people respond to, where they drop off, and how their journey can be improved.

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Why Digital Analytics and Marketing?

What draws me to this field is the combination of creativity and analysis. Marketing tells the story, analytics helps us understand how it’s received—and together they create impact.

There’s a concept in Chinese painting where the most important element—the moon, for example—is left blank. You don’t see it directly, but you sense it through everything around it. That’s how I think of analytics: the real insights often lie not in the obvious numbers, but in the gaps and silences, in what people don’t do as much as in what they do.

Who This Blog Is For

This blog is for anyone coming from a background like mine— where meaning is debated, and where knowledge is constructed rather than just “discovered.” If you’ve ever felt that data isn’t “your language,” I hope my journey shows that it can be—especially when you bring your own way of thinking to it.

I’ll be sharing what I learn as I go: the tools, the concepts, the frustrations, and the “aha” moments. My goal isn’t to become a digital analyst overnight. It’s to build a bridge—between my humanities training and the data-driven world I’m entering.

What’s Next?

In my next post, I’ll explore what “digital analytics” actually means, and why it’s not just for tech experts or math geniuses, but for anyone who knows how to interpret and ask good questions.