An Important Lesson I Learned From Excel

While trying to land my data job, I hated seeing people say, “Excel is the best tool to learn.”

That killed me. Made me wanna cry.

If you’ve followed me long enough, you remember my old posts openly discussing my hatred for Excel.

Here’s how I felt about your favorite Excel features:

Pivot tables?
Yuck. Don’t want to deal with that.

VBA and macros?
Whoop, I’ll dodge that one.

VLookups, XLookups, and all the other Lookups out there?
Heck no. I’m not dealing with those, either.

When I finally landed my job, I loved the fact I’d be using SQL instead of Excel. Even though everyone used Excel in their first data jobs, I felt proud not to be one of them.

And now…

I LAUGH AT HOW WRONG I WAS.

There’s not a moment when I don’t have an Excel spreadsheet open at work. I use it daily (though nothing advanced, just for data validation).

The tool is growing on me.

I’ve realized that while everyone has preferences and favorite tools, you’ll never know what tool your company wants you to use. You’ll never know what tool will help you the most. You’ll never know what tool will rule the Dorky World of Data in the future.

So, be open-minded.

Be willing to learn and use different data tools. Don't limit yourself.