Chapter 1 Complete

This semester went by faster than I thought it would. My favorite part was the in person lectures. I found Mr. Wu's Bonus Quizzes to be the most challenging part because they required me to really think outside of the box and not just give the answer as I'm used to doing. He was always helpful and you can tell he had a passion for the curriculum. There was so much to do with LabSim, Lectures and blog posts, so it was easy to fall behind. Mr. Wu always made sure to keep us updated on our status so that we may finish the semester strong. This was an awesome semester!

Now I'm Smart

Smart Art is something I never knew existed until this lesson. I can think of at least 3 PowerPoint presentations I made in the past where I tried portray a step-by-step flow of some sort in this manner, but it never looked "neat" in my opinion. I would create a shape, copy it and add arrows in between them. Once the lesson showed me the different Smart Art styles, I realized I could have been doing this a lot faster and cleaner. I can't wait to create a document to utilize this. PowerPoint has so many features it's mind boggling.

This, Or That

The "If" function stands out to me the most when it comes to chapter 5. It's also one I struggled with the most. After understanding what information Excel wanted from me, it became much easier to use the function. "Logical Test" is asking the data you are looking for. After the comma, you enter what you want to happen when you find the data; You enter another comma and enter what you want to see if it doesnt find the data. I read it in my head as "If(this happens,do this, if not do that.)Be sure to add quotation marks around any text and it should work every time. Once I understood this, it made the other functions easy to understand as well.

Portraits and Landscapes

This section stood out to me most because I remember years ago struggling while formating flyers. I ended up giving up and using other programs such as Powerpoint and Microsoft Paint of all applications. This section sort of connected long lost dots that I gave up on years ago out of frustration. Being able to put 1 form in a document landscape while the others remain portrait is what stood out to me most. Doing this in the applied lab was actually fun because I can see that I'm actually bettering my Microsoft Office knowledge.

Meet Me Backstage

Of all the years of using Windows applications, I didnt know how much you could do in the Backstage View. I would simply use it to Save, Save As and Print whatever document I was working on. As the lesson went on, it shocked me that It gave so much information such as how many pages your document had, the date and time it was creaded and how long it took to edit the file. This lesson caused me to dig a little deeper and start explring options like transforming documents to a Web Page and posting the work to a blog. Before learning this, I would have tried to copy and paste whatever content I was working on, along with the formatting which probably would have been more hassle than it is worth.

Collaboration is key

The lesson that stood out to me the most in Chapter 2 was the collaboration tools. Thinking back, everytime I had to get advice or a suggestion on a document I was creating, I would email the document back and forth between editors. It would end up with confusing naming conventions such as "Draft4" and Draft4Final."  The Applied Labs on TestOut were the most complicated for me because I never used these features. I'm going to go back to master this section because I found it very useful. When I have to edit a document for work, I can just give access to the individuals who I want to look over the document instead of going back-and-forth with countless drafts as I used to do.

To Compress or "Un-compress", that is the question

File compression is a term I've been hearing for years. I always knew what it meant...sort of, but could never really explain what was actually happening. One of the selling points of my camera was that it can shoot in Uncompressed Raw, which was supposed to get you even better image quality than shooting compressed. After watching and re-watching lesson 1.1.13 File Compression for clarity, I feel comfortable enough to know that I don't need to use that setting at all and I can save space on my memory card.

Off to an Exciting Start!

Starting this journey is definitely one of the most exciting things that has happened to me in a couple years. Furthering my education has been on my to-do list for years so after leaving the military, I went for it. I have to remind myself to stay motivated and remember that I am the only thing standing in my way.