XL

Although we are glued to each other a little too much these days because of the paper I am working on for the bachelor project, I still love my computer. Excel is my favorite application, I realized that when I was making the appendix for the paper. However the appendix is still seventy-eight pages large, compared to the enormous amount of data we had gathered from the thirty-six participants, it is neatly slim. Even more important, it looks smooth and provides all the information necessary to give insight in how this research was carried out. I am almost tempted to attach a copy here so you could judge for yourself.

When you first force yourself through the basic rules of Excel you will learn how well the build-in functions will work for you. I particularly like the “if” functions but yesterday I have learned the convenient function of merging several cells with text. And the easiest thing, compared to Word for example, is that you are able to hide the columns you do not need to appear in your final report.

The analyzing of the data needs to be done with SPSS of course and although I am quite used to that now and even have a student copy at home it is not as elegant as Excel. In particular it consumes a lot of memory and it is a heavy burden on the processor sometimes. But I could not do without this statistical software either. Statistics, after all, are based on mathematical calculations of chance. Although we have learned to do that manually in the five statistic courses we have had, it is very time consuming.

While writing this down it suddenly dawned on me that I am almost at the end of the undergraduate study of Psychology. In a private Excel file I keep record of the marks and credits I have gathered so far. At this very moment I have got 132 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System)  out of the required 180. The 2 is extracurricular from a Summer Course “Big Science” I have done last year. Most courses provided 5 ECTS each and this year I have done also two 10 credit courses. The bachelor project paper will be good for 20 ECTS and the last exam I will do this school year is also a 10 credit one. That will bring the total this year of 162. Coming September I will do a minor “Brain and Cognition” of 30 ECTS and hopefully I will graduate in December 2012. Collected 12 ECTS more than I should have and meeting the entry requirements of more than one master course. I like to have a broad spectrum of choices, however, I do also realize that I am longing to work in my job more than the part-time hours I am giving it now.

One ECTS is good for approximately 28 hours studying, including contact hours for lectures and workgroups. On average that means 1,680 hours a year. Excluding the Summer break that results in 40 hours a week. Compared to commercial education it is not expensive, however I do not receive any kind of scholarship like younger people in the Netherlands do. The tuition fee is approximately 1,700 Euro a year, without books and other materials. I have done commercial courses before for only ten days each for the same amount of money but now I have less hours left a week to earn me the money. After three years now I am ready to admit that it is heavy sometimes but I do not regret a single minute of it. How on earth did I wander from being satisfied about the completed appendix to a slight complaining of the amount of work the study as a whole involved?

Maybe it is because I have a build-in “if” function as well. To analyze my past. What if I had been to college when I was eighteen instead of being in my forties and single mom of four. Than I could have been rich by now but I would have missed the advantages of having four encouraging great kids. I am also trying to make the right choices in the present, like, what if I choose this master education or that. Will that then bring me to the career I dream of? Even though Excel seems to be without limits for the extend of a  spreadsheet it sure is restricted to 256 columns and 65,536 rows. My limitations go far beyond that although it may cost some memory and processor capacity when I am doing a heavy job.