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I wasn't really sure what to title my blog cause these two questions don't relate at all to each other but summer is here and I been using my school's website to try and find a job on campus. And at least 50% of the job postings that deal with office/clerical work have "must be proficient in word or excel" and I have no idea what it takes to be considered proficient at it. If someone who's had a job before and was considered proficient would help me out on this I would appreciate it. It's not like you can take a course in excel and word and after you pass the class you can call urself proficient at it or anything so I assume it's just something you had to learn from a previous job or something.
I mean for example, microsoft word..obviously I know how to like.. type into it? rofl. dunno what else they could want from there. I mean I can indent paragraphs by hitting "tab", center the title, change the font size..bold letters, italisize..ez stuff like that. Does this make me "proficient in word"? I really don't know that's why I'm asking.
And my second question is, the tap water from my sink leaves a white chalky residue after the water dries up for some of my dishes such as stainless steal skillet and deep frying pans that are black. Dishes that are glass don't really have this happen alot. But for the stainless steal, it forms bumpy "rock-like" white stuff on the surface and I can literally scratch the white chalky residue and it scratches off white powdery stuff.
Now there's two viewpoints on this.
My roommate thinks it's calcium in the water and because there's so much of it that you are able to see it, our water must be very "healthy" because it has alot of calcium in it
My mom's viewpoint on it is, how can calcium that is that noticeable on the eyes be safe and healthy for u? I mean I know there are natural minerals in the water but is it considered safe to drink plain with that much calcium or whatever the white stuff is in it?
So my mom told me to buy bottled water ever since it ruined one of my pans but I'm getting tired of lugging heavy water bottles up to my 2nd floor apartment building and wanted to switch back to my old brita filter and was wondering if this is okay and the filtering would filter out enough of the calcium for it to still be considered healthy? I mean for my mom, she doesn't want me drinking that tap water at all,filtered or not filtered :p
edit: can someone whose had a job before that required you to be proficient at excel and word list out some of the duties you had to do on those two programs? that would help me out alot. I have plenty of time this summer and I think it's time for me to learn.
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1) Proficient with office just means in Word you know how to compose a document and not make it look like crap. In Excel it means knowing your way around formulas, pivot tables and stuff like that. Some jobs also require you to be proficient with charts but not a whole lot. At least that has been my experience. As long as you know the basics and know how to google the rest you'll be fine. I work with Excel spreadsheets on a daily basis for some years now and me and my coworkers still learn little tricks from each other all the time.
2) The water is most likely completely safe to drink. Here in the Netherlands there is also calcium in the water and I like it a lot better as bottled water. However as I don't know the exact amounts in your water you could always check with the water company. As they provide the water they sure as hell know what's in it. Just give them a call.
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Yeah, that's just calcium in the water. You've got what's known as hard water: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water That 'chalky' residue may in fact be chalk, or calcium carbonate, depending on where you live.
No reason at all to be buying bottled water, your tap is 100% safe. There are in fact extremely strict and enforced EPA rules for public water safety in the US, you don't need to worry. If the flavor of the water isn't great (which tends to be the case with hardwater) a brita pitcher or one of those filters you put on the sink helps quite a bit; and you won't be spending so much money on bottles. For your dishes, well that's why you dry them after washing...
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Being proficient in excel means you can do more than just enter data.
Knowing functions, formulas, shortcuts for working with large spreadsheets, using graphs, cell formatting etc etc etc
anyone can learn these things on basic levels in just a couple hours or less in my opinion.
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