#52 Stories--Story #16

What is something you taught yourself to do without much help from anyone else?

When I first went back to work in 2013, I was worried that I didn't know nearly enough to do basic office work.  I was right--and wrong--about that!

I began working at a company where the office manager, Travis, was a BIG fan of Microsoft's Excel program-so much so that he would write documents in that spreadsheet program instead of using Word.  Consequently, I needed to learn or fail with Excel.

I found I watched a LOT of YouTube videos on "how to ________ in Excel".  and I really did learn quite a bit.  I sued the help feature too and learned as I went along.  I have gotten faster and more competent as I have practiced what I have learned.  Travis has been gone from the company now almost four years and I have had to adjust, remodel, or rewrite many of the documents or tools he had left for me.  And I am doing pretty good with it all, if I do say so myself.

I have also implemented Microsoft Word as soften as I need to rewrite something that is actually a document--instead of using a spreadsheet to write on. But I have also learned to use Excel to create the forms and tools for checklists with some certainty.

There are surely easier ways to learn but being thrown in the deep end of the pool helped me to figure out how to swim in the office pool pretty fast.