<p>We do the Virginia peanuts all the time too. Virginia ham has not been well received by relatives–considered too salty. We like getting cheese and summer sausage from Wisconsin. I think of salt water taffy for New England. </p>
<p>S1 is getting challenged with some tough assignments that require higher level Excel skills than he currently possesses, although he is working to figure it out as quickly as possible but feeling the stress. I have used S1’s experience as an opportunity to remind S2 of the importance of being able to write complex macros and otherwise understand and use every facet of both Excel and Access. The summer school class S2 is currently taking is teaching the basics, but he probably has access to materials that would allow him to go well beyond what is required to simply get an A in the class. Personally, I can’t think of a single class that will be more valuable in terms of job skills so if he ever had a time to step up and really learn something useful, this is it, in my view.</p>
<p>Son starts summer school today. Trying to get in two semesters of French this summer. I realized that I’ve been on a three week vacation from the gut-wrenching feeling of Son In School. For three weeks I had no worries, now I have worries.</p>
<p>Analyst, I think the key to the ham is the sweet potato biscuits that go along with it. A little sweet and a little salt. </p>
<p>I could not agree more on the ability to use Access and Excel. Expertise in this area really sets one apart in the job market. I was fortunate to have a position several years ago that really trained me well- it’s possible to do a great deal more with Excel that one would expect. The charting function is particularly valuable in a business context. </p>
<p>Son will be starting school again in August. I think the reality of a career in manual labor has hit home. He does not need to commit to a particular program or track at this time so will focus on the gen ed requirements for the guaranteed transfer to VA state institutions for the time being.</p>
<p>Yes, Son will be home. At least with summer school, he’ll be the only one in school for most of the summer (younger D will go for two weeks), so I’ll only have to ride herd on one person’s homework.</p>
<p>We’ll get his psychological eval with recs for accommodations at the end of next week. We haven’t bothered to have Son contact the disablities office at the CC yet…we’ll just wait until he has the psych recs in hand.</p>
<p>I have this idea that the older D might do well in the field of commercial real estate. There aren’t very many colleges that offer real estate degrees. I’ve asked various clients and other acquaintances what the best undergraduate preparation for a real estate career would be. One guy, who is president of a big development company, said, “become very competent in Excel.”</p>
<p>Many community colleges offer courses in Excel and the like. It is well worth the time investment to become proficient. Using Excel also helped me to become more “step” focused in terms of my thought processes, believe it or not. </p>
<p>I hope the French courses work out well, missypie. It is interesting- one thing I have noticed with son is that now he is not in a formal educational program he is doing more reading. I asked him what he was doing on his computer- he was reading some NYTimes article. He told me he didn’t think this kind of reading “counted” since it wasn’t a book. Definitely counts in my mind.</p>
<p>This may be dumb, but don’t you just choose to learn Excel? It’s pretty simple, though inelegant software. I learned by doing. Macros are another story, but most people never learn to do them.</p>
<p>Access is probably a different story. If you don’t know how to use data base software, I bet a class would be helpful. And, figuring out how to link the two up turned out in one setting to be useful. </p>
<p>I don’t think I ever took a course in programming but joined a club in HS and taught myself and then got jobs during the summer and in college writing software. Once you know one language and the logic of programming, you can teach yourself any other language. I wonder whether it might be better to learn to to program in a higher level language. Then, Excel would be trivial to pick up. But, I might be wrong here as other people’s brains work might work very differently.</p>
<p>I think that some people are motivated to teach themselves things and others do better in a class. </p>
<p>Yesterday I was reading a magazine article about a woman who had never cooked a thing and took a cooking class and learned how to make chicken breasts, pasta and blueberry cobbler. Many people would just get out a cookbook and have at it, rather than taking a class. Same with Excel, or sewing or cake decorating. </p>
<p>Some people teach themselves and others do better with instruction. For some, signing up and paying money for a class is what MAKES them learn the thing; it takes it off the “some day I’ll learn how to …” list.</p>
<p>amtc and moda and sabaray, good suggestion, probably maple syrup since we are in Massachusetts. The other regional food is lobster, but I wouldn’t want him to take a lobster to Switzerland. Plus, I used some miles for him and he’s flying through Montreal. I’m pleased he came up with the idea himself that he ought to bring a gift. </p>
<p>peonies, congratulations. My parents actually came to part of Reunions when my kids came and took responsibility for them so that we could engage with other folks, but they live in NJ an hour away so it was easy. Maybe you can get to go. It is quite an experience. [I have no recollection of whether they came to Reunions the year I graduated – the circuits don’t work that far back]. We were almost relieved when my daughter decided at the last minute not to come. She’s 16 and looks much older and gets lots of second looks. Every 5th year class has a band or two for two or three nights and some are fabulous. Not sure I’d want her wandering around parties with lots of seniors (and alumni kids) drinking. The one downside of the whole thing was the amount that some of the seniors appeared to have drunk while they were waiting for their entrance to the parade – as they had to wait for at least two hours in the sun as all of the other classes, starting with a guy from the class of 1925, marched. We’re going to suggest that the school provide some other food/drink to the graduating class and the 5th year class.</p>
<p>woody, at his school it is called computer science 101. It appears to be pretty in-depth (four credit hours). It is a required course for some majors and a frequent complaint is that CS101 homework takes forever to do. It’s the kind of course that probably varies a lot in terms of rigor.</p>
<p>Sabaray, I have also been lucky to have jobs that provided a lot of training in Excel and Access, including all day classes for small groups of advanced users who have gone through all the level I, II, and III training. I have also benefitted from having a number of savvy derivative quant guys around or other folks who can help with complex tasks. The more I learn the more I realize I need to learn. Those programs are amazingly deep. I will definitely direct S2 to look for the next level up (talking to the computer science folks at his college) and to keep going in this area every time he has an elective opportunity.</p>
<p>shawbridge, Excel can be used for simple stuff or it can be used for incredibly complicated stuff. There is a lot of power beneath the surface.</p>
<p>Thanks Analyst.
Shawbridge - The fact is that I use it on a very limited basis at work and did indeed just learn by doing. I have a feeling however, that there may be many more applications that I could use it in and just have not been exposed to them or found the time at work to do so. Unfortunately, I do not have the kind of job that I can just close the door for an hour or two and do my own thing.</p>
<p>One of my jobs (as a financial consultant), I remember being chastised for producing a spreadsheet that was deemed “inelegant.” I think we were optimizing the pricing for various users of a water and sewer system (industrial, residential, commercial, etc.) or it could have been optimizing which maturities of bonds to call among thousands of different maturities. Anyway, I obtained the correct answer (as confirmed by my PhD in applied mathematics boss), but it was pointed out that I had not set up the spreadsheet to work through dozens of “what if” scenarios. Creating spreadsheets that work into the future is not necessarily intuitive. The same holds true with Access.</p>
<p>Great examples, Analyst. I had a sales analysis position that required detailed breakdowns of products sold in multiple variations and projecting future growth for each variation. Also had to breakdown the sales in multiple locations - something like 80 offices. And then the client wanted it presented in chart form- so I quickly became an expert in pivot charts. You can do so much with Excel if you know how to ask it. I enjoy working with it.</p>
<p>sabaray, I agree, it’s possible to get very attached to Excel. I remember keeping a database of various interest rates (LIBOR, Treasuries, Munis, etc.). The rates updated easily enough automatically every day from Bloomberg but the holidays in England (which affect LIBOR) differed from those in the U.S., so daily rates would quickly get skewed. It is not a good use of time to have to manually realign. You need to be able to print the charts at the click of button. Excel does let you fix that problem so everything lines up, but I’m not sure my 22 year old could do it.</p>
<p>D is registered for CS101 in the fall so I’ll be curious to see what she learns. Gross generalization, but I think many assume that everyone knows how to use Excel. On the simplest level, yes; but when you are really utilizing it to its full potential everyone needs some training. And I am honestly not sure that’s obtained in a university setting.</p>
<p>On the receiving end of hostess gifts from international students and au pairs – some lovely English coasters, which we still use, and another English student brought a couple of beautiful tea towels featuring Durham and a small book telling us about the history of Sanctuary in the Durham cathedral. An au pair relocating from Lexington, Kentucky brought us bourbon balls, which were pretty darn heavenly. (Somehow I’d missed them before that, and I don’t know why. Everybody should have bourbon balls. Lots and lots of bourbon balls. Mmmm.) </p>
<p>When D was an exchange student we sent over a box of brownie mix along with instructions for converting temp from F to C and water from cup measure to decilitres. From what D said in her letter, the host family thought this was by far the finest example of amazing food from America they’d ever seen. She said her host dad kept coming in the kitchen and asking if it was done yet. They were fans. The peanut butter was not as well received. I suspect they’re still wondering why D was in raptures.</p>
<p>I agree with Sabaray – there’s more to spreadsheets that what people typically learn. I’m on a grants committee that gets school budgets as part of the application process, and the number of errors I find in fairly casual review is scarily high, and the number of people who include cross-checks and protection in their spreadsheets, sadly low. </p>
<p>From what I can tell, many of the courses spend much more time on formatting and printing than they do on issues like importing data, working with large amounts of data, cleaning/reformatting data, applying protections, dynamically importing external data, and pivot tables.</p>
<p>Well, I learned something new as I don’t know anything about protections in Excel. I try to teach myself new stuff (and have acquired about 10 programming languages over the years) and can do lots of stuff in Excel, but obviously not everything. These days, I don’t typically make the spreadsheets, but it is good to know what to ask for. I’ll investigate.</p>
<p>Ah well. No crepes or pancakes for the maple syrup, Zetesis? How about maple sugar candy then? Or, how about a book by Thoreau?</p>
<p>In the years I’ve lived and traveled in Switzerland, I’ve never eaten pancakes, waffles, or “French” toast … I don’t remember ever seeing or buying syrup there.</p>
<p>Maybe maple syrup candy; or how about something with blueberries? (Still, as with so many items we could think, it’s like carrying coals to Newcastle …)</p>