Excel

I taught a man in my office how to use MSExcel a few days ago. He
needed to copy onto the computer and print out a table one of the
accountants had drawn out on graph paper. He began using the “insert
a table” option in MSWord, which I think is how most everyone does
things here, when I interrupted him and offered to show him a better
way. [For those of you reading this who are computer literate, you
know that Excel is a far superior program for these kinds of things
than Word. For those of you who are not computer literate, just
trust me on this… and stop forwarding me chain emails! You won’t
really live a lonely, destitute life if you fail to send that email
to at least 5 friends.] So Vadim and I worked together and created a
pretty good table.

Then the next day he had to do something similar and opted to go back
to Word. Oh well. I guess changing things will take time and I’ve
started creating some teaching files and tables to continue to work
on explaining Excel.

Along the same lines as changing things, I had a discussion – which
was really more one-sided than the word “discussion” implies – with a
geography teacher who actually knew a decent amount of American
history. He said that when the slaves were freed many of them didn’t
really know what to do with themselves, that they were not mentally
prepared for their freedom and the responsibility it entailed. He
then drew the comparison to the people of Moldova, who are not
necessarily mentally prepared for the active and entrepreneurial
aspects of life demanded by capitalism after decades of Soviet rule.
I asked what he’s doing to change that and he said he’s teaching his
students to think. Well, I suppose that’s a start.