Saturday, October 24, 2009

Oct. 24-Learning a new program

My job as a retail manager requires me to work on a fairly complicated Excel spreadsheet. It's already been pre-formatted so I usually just have to go in and make my changes or additions each week then save and close. But occasionally I do need to hide rows or re-format columns that lose their formulas...probably something funky I did to it. Anyway, I don't know a thing about how to do that so I end up having to track down my boss and get her to do it. She doesn't mind, but I do.

Tonight while Tom is away at a hockey game with a buddy, I thought it would be the perfect quiet night for me to teach myself all there is to know about Excel. Except that it's a very boring program and I don't like working with numbers, charts and formulas. I was a Mac girl in my former life and knew a few design programs all of which were very visual. Fun, exploding graphics in bright colors can keep my attention, but numbers and cells don't. I avoided getting started until 8:45 at which point I knew it was now or never. Thinking about my boss who is 20 years younger and can fix my screw ups with a few quick movements on the keyboard, finally got me motivated.

I put on a tutorial and tried to follow along but 45 min. later I knew that I was done. This was so painfully boring to try and learn that I finally just stopped. I did pick up a few tricks that I know will be useful. I'm one of those people that has to do something over and over to learn it, so I just need to give myself more time on the job before I can be an Excel expert...but for now, I need to just not be an Excel idiot. I wonder if I learned enough tonight to fake my way through or did I learn just enough to make me even more dangerous?

No comments:

Post a Comment