Final Exam: Excel Course Assessment

When reflecting upon a course following a semester, the prevailing sentiment is typically one of relief. Sure, there is often a strong sense of achievement, but the dominant feeling is a sense of liberation. Not so with Excel for Business.

School is not typically a place where one has the opportunity to learn vast amounts of thoroughly useful information. Yet every Monday and Wednesday, from 1:30-2:45, I would look forward to the opportunity to ascend the 11 stories to the Belfer Hall computer labs, to engage in a fun-filled, interactive, challenging, and rewarding exploration of Microsoft Excel 2007. This journey revealed with clarity what had previously been just an uninformed impression; Excel is from the most powerful and useful tools available to all businesspeople and household managers alike.

I enjoyed the class assignments and projects, largely because of the delightful manner in which Professor Jorisch leads the class. His inexhaustible patience, amiable disposition, and perceptible compassion all work in conjunction with his extraordinary ability to explain complicated instructions and concepts in an easily understandable way. While I’m sure that the textbook served as a helpful anchor in driving through the material, I have no doubt that it was the innate talent and deft methodology employed by Professor Jorisch that made this class so rewarding.

Beyond the class work, I feel that I gained very much from the Casegrader homework assignments. Included in the skills acquired were: applying formulas to compute totals, linking different worksheets to one another to arrive at the desired figures, using Excel formatting options to make information stand out, using the IF function, working with charts and graphics, freezing rows and columns, creating tables, filtering data, sorting table data, working with several different files and linking them all together, using the VLOOKUP function, and creating Macros.

There were other skills acquired, in a couple of the group projects, and especially in my preparation for the final. I think that while this course demanded a strong and committed work ethic, the productive and agreeable nature of the class made living up to that commitment easy, even fun. Overall, I look back on this course as having been an uncommonly enjoyable and valuable experience. Thanks Professor!!