Dylan Radford UR, Getting a Little Better with Excel!!

     My experience through this lab so far has been both eye opening and filled with new knowledge that I know I will need throughout my career. This is the reason why Excel was so intimidating for me at first. I know that I will probably use this program a lot in my life and I need to be comfortable and quick when using it. In fact, My Dad is a school psychologist and tests young students to see if they are fit for the gifted program in elementary school. He uses the same Excel program to track the children's scores and use them to tell whether they are ready or not. This is a good example to show that Excel can be used for a multitude of things not just ocean science.
     The first week of Excel was definitely tough and I was not really sure what I was doing but I stayed after class with Dr. Woodall and she helped me create the graphs and complete the assignment. The next day when I woke up I had forgotten most of what I had learned and was freaking out! I took pretty decent notes in my field notebook but there were still little details that were left out that I desperately needed. This was a wake up call telling me "you need to practice taking descriptive notes!" After about an hour of trying to figure it out I asked my dad to help me. The way he was using the program looked so simple because he was changing things and putting in graphs so quickly.

I had trouble with this graph at first but I think it has improved!

By the next class I was pretty good at putting in the graphs, but then we had to put in our own Information and tell which Graph to use. This time I took a deep breath and told myself "you just have to bit the bullet and get right in" so that's what I did and I was pretty comfortable with putting in the information and telling my graphs what to do. I still needed my dads help for a few things but in just a week I could see that I was a lot better with using this program and I think that with a few more weeks of graphing the activities we do in lab, I will be an Excel master.