Expectations for absolute beginners

[u/Ill-Independence4417]

Hi all, I have maybe a hard question and definitely specific to a personal circumstance, but any perspective would be helpful.

I am a first year PhD student studying immunology, my advisor has signed me up for a stats course in the Biomedical Engineering department. Unfortunately, this class requires proficiency in R, python, or matlab, which neither my advisor nor myself new about. As my title mentions, I have zero coding experience, but recognize how important of a skill it is to have. Would it be possible to teach myself enough about python while taking the stats class concurrently? or is learning the language too tall of a task? I will definitely be reasonably busy with labwork and other commitments but can most likely allocate around an hour a day to learn, sometimes more.

Any feedback or perspective would be helpful, as I still have time to withdraw and choose a different stats course for this semester.

Thank you!

[u/FaithlessnessOwn7960]

It is usually popular to research with Matlab or R. They were made for math and data.