Day 3 and 4: Almost Platinum and Learning to Excel

The morning of the third day we continued to work on our work keys skills tests. I find math pleasantly relaxing. I like the process, breaking a problem into its steps, setting up the formula, plugging in the numbers and out comes your perfect little answer. So for the entire morning of the second day I boned up the processes of math, lots of percentage conversions and fractions. After I got bored with math I tried out the other skills test and was happy to find I got platinum level scores on those. But that would set me up with a bit of false confidence. After a morning at the computer I went out for lunch.

When we got back it was time to test. Much to the elation of the instructor, and myself, I must admit, I didn’t miss a single question out of the 33 that sent my way. I then went for the reading test. I got a perfect score on that one too. Sadly, when it came time to do the locating information test I missed a couple and only got the gold. That means that my overall certificate will be gold rating even though I scored perfectly on the other two test. I guess you’re only as good as your weakest area. Having completed the test, I got to get out of class pretty early. It was a good thing too, because I was having an intense craving for a Braum’s hamburger.

Braum’s is a regional ice cream chain that also does some fast food. It’s similar to an In & Out burger, only they have a miniature dairy market for milk and eggs and ice cream in each store and they don’t pay their employees as well. I don’t know what sort of opiates they put in those burgers at Braum’s, but I’ve found that since moving back to Oklahoma that I can’t go more than a few days without one of their juicy burgers. They stuff them with thick tomato slices and crisp lettuce and when you bite into it, you are filled with a Proustian warmth. Braum’s burgers are my madeleines.

I also decided to treat my nearly platinum self to a cherry lime aide. I watched carefully as a young girl was walked through the steps of squeezing fresh limes into a paper cup and adding the syrup and seltzer that infuses this sweet-tart mix with its sublime effervescence. As she handed it to me, I asked “Is this your first cherry lime aide?” She flashed an abashed smile and said it was. I told her I’d let her know how it was. But I didn’t try it in front of her. Lime aides can be hit or miss and I didn’t want to embarrass the poor kid by making a sour face. Lucky for me she did a pretty good job.

The next day, we were shuffled into another computer room to get some training on the ubiquitous spreadsheet program, Excel. My cousin Jim once told me that the world was run on Excel spreadsheets. A frightening thought. I used the program almost daily at my old job, so I know it fairly well. That being the case I was asked by the instructor to sit near those who had less experience, this way I could help them out. I picked up a new nickname, “Class Genius.”

Throughout the day the instructor asked me several questions, at one point she wanted to set up an excel sheet comparing wind turbine performance to average wind speed, but she had too many variables out there. The lesson here is you have to know what you want before you set up an excel spread sheet. One of the other things I learned was how to lock spreadsheets so you can only change certain variables. This is very useful for creating form documents that can be distributed around a business. I also use google spreadsheet for a variety of purposes. I showed the instructor my google account and she asked me to show the rest of the class. The guys seemed appreciative, I think it’s a great thing as we are all moving closer to the cloud.