#many managers have been convinced that i am a technological wizard instead of someone who knows how to google excel formulas

[ballroomnotoriety]

one of the most valuable things any teacher ever did for me was when my high school physics teacher banned calculators and told us we could only use excel.

i made a google sheet a work that took rsvps from our instructors who are agreeing to teach this year out of the system where they RSVPed

then it calculates a unique ID for them based on name and local union

then there are sheets broken out by course number (because each first number has a different person coordinating those instructors) and filled with the info we used to contact them. these generate the same unique ID from their name and local union

then i used if(iserror(vlookup script to pull over their rsvp, the email they entered, and any questions or concerns they had

and then i used conditional formatting to highlight anyone whose entered email didn't match the one we sent their invite to so we can update it in our system

and my boss took one look at this and said "you know no one else in our department can do anything even approaching this?"

so i texted my dad to thank him for teaching me how to do vlookups.

sincerely, if you are starting out in your career, learn how to make excel do a tiny bit of magic and you will go so so very far.

learn how to do vlookup, xlookup, if, iserror, countif, and sum and you'll be most of the way there. conditional formatting is annoying, but useful. pivot tables, if used correctly, might get you referred to the spanish inquisition. and VBA scripts! you can do so much stuff automatically with VBA. I use it every year to break our course evaluation master into individual sheets based on course and instructor. takes me 20 minutes instead of 3 weeks it would take doing it by hand.

you can get a lot of pre-written VBA code online as well, so as long as you know how to activate the developer console, you'll be fine. it's nowhere near as scary as you think it's gonna be.

learn excel. learn spreadsheets. you'll thank me for it.

[aparecium-hq]

Welcome once more to Aparecium, Beth! You have been accepted for Raphael Selwyn. I have a hard time complimenting myself in the third person, so here’s Kat’s words instead. “I love that like he has all these crossroads that he's coming to in his life and so many choices he has to make. I am excited to see him on the dash.” I’ll check out the new member checklist, and jump right in.

Character Basics

Birthday (Age): January 8, 2002 (25) Gender (Pronouns): Cis Male (He/Him) Sexuality: Bisexual Blood Status: Pureblood Hogwarts House/School: Ravenclaw Occupation: Journalist at The Daily Prophet Faceclaim: Sean Teale

Any requested changes? Nope!

Biography:

Raphael Selwyn grew up not coming up with his own goals and ambitions but hearing what his would be. He grew up hearing about how important it was to be Sacred Twenty-Eight, how he was part of an important dwindling group who had always had power in the magical world. The Selwyn Legacy was a phrase Raphael heard over and over again growing up. When Raphael reached Hogwarts, he found a few of people who also felt that way, but that opinion was far from majority. Raphael realized his family was not part of some ruling class but rather an elitist group who nothing much to their names but their names. His legacy was an imprisoned uncle who was a known Death Eater and a father running a paper that Raphael grew to realize was not everyone’s first choice, as he’d always heard growing up.

But what was that information supposed to change? Raphael still had family expectations to follow. Even the discovery of the Madley Principles of Magic and Technology at the beginning of his sixth year didn’t change anything. Raphael could discover and enjoy as much muggle stuff as he wanted after graduation, but he also had to follow through on the Selwyn Legacy. Their family had controlled The Daily Prophet for generations now, and Raphael was the only one left to continue that legacy–something his father was quick to remind him of when he learned Raphael was dating a halfblood wizard at graduation. Under his father’s pressure, Raphael ended the relationship. He had a legacy to think about, after all.

Raphael would have readily admitted that journalism wasn’t his greatest passion. Perhaps because his father sensed that, when Raphael eventually became an editor, he was put in change of the Lifestyle section of the paper. While it was theoretically a section about keeping up with announcements in the lives of wix, there were only so many marriages and deaths to report in a month, and with daily news requirements, Raphael wasn’t proud to admit his department was almost purely puff pieces and unconfirmed scandal. He didn’t like it, but he also had no ideas about how to fix it. Raphael figured that was just part of his lot in life.

Then Matilda Nott became part of his life. Raphael couldn’t say he knew her well. They had been a couple years apart and in different houses at Hogwarts, and aside from social obligations related to pureblood society, Raphael wasn’t sure he’d ever talked to her much. When his father told him that he was to ask Matilda to marry her, Raphael thought it was a joke. Last he’d heard, Matilda had a girlfriend. Would she even want to marry him? As far as he could guess, she must have received the same lecture he had about carrying on a pureblood legacy because Matilda surprised him. She said yes.

Raphael is trying to learn to love her. His father wanted to push a quick engagement, but Raphael dragged his feet. He pushed back, maybe for the first time in his life, insisting that if they were going to get married, they at least needed time to get to know each other. Matilda is a perfectly lovely woman, but Raphael is having a hard time convincing himself she’s the wix for him. At this point, it feels like something that will become true for his life, whether he can convince himself or not. Raphael has never pursued his own passions. Why would love be the exception?

Character Questionnaire

How does your character feel about their family?

The Selwyn Legacy’s importance has been driven into Raphael’s head his whole life. His mother had been born Miranda Flint, and while the Flint family name was an important part of his heritage, it was merely a stepping stone toward continuing the Selwyn family as far as Fedele Selwyn was concerned. Raphael knows his father must have mourned Miranda when she died in an explosion caused by homemade floo powder, but Raphael rarely saw him in the time after. The only reason he knows his father put much effort in was because of Prophet archives he later found which showed his father ran a long series of articles listing the dangers of homemade floo powder and another series unsuccessfully advocating to have Runespoor fangs reclassified as a dangerous and restricted trade item.

Raphael was ten when his mother died, and he didn’t truly get his father back until the end of his first year at Hogwarts, at which point his father dove back in full force on the importance of family legacy and Raphael’s place in it. It shouldn’t have surprised him then when his eventually engagement to Matilda was arranged. Raphael is trying to focus on that idea of legacy. If he doesn’t follow his father’s wishes, his family life is gone in his father’s eyes. Even if Raphael marries someone not Sacred 28, even if he has children or adopts them in that circumstance, it won’t be enough in his father’s eyes. It’s not about the Selwyn name, It’s about the pureblood legacy. Raphael is just a piece of that, and he’s always known it.

What does your character value in a friendship?

Raphael doesn’t have a lot of close friends. He’s always held people at a distance. He doesn’t particularly like most of the Sacred Twenty-eight purebloods left because he thinks most of them are too stuck up. He suspects most would say that about him too. Raphael does have some friends, but he has a tendency to hold people at a distance. It takes a lot of loyalty, time, and trust to get close to him.

How would your character describe their own work ethic? Is that an accurate measure of themself?

Raphael believes himself to be determined, competent, and detail-oriented. This is true when he really cares about something, but he doesn’t have enough passion in his work for it to always be true then. People come to him with just about any story, and he’s willing to print it if it seems like it’ll sell copies. He’s not necessarily the best fact-checker as an editor, but Raphael figures if his father cared about The Prophet keeping a more meticulous reputation, something would have been done by now.

How would a stranger who has just met your character describe them?

Depending on the circumstances, Raphael is likely to come off as either arrogant or uptight. He tries to be cordial and polite, but when he’s feeling apathetic about the meeting, he’s not great at hiding it.

What magical skill or talent is your character most proud of?

In school, Raphael did well in many classes, but the class he enjoyed most was Herbology. In the years since leaving Hogwarts, he has continued to maintain a diverse greenhouse full of magical plants. Raphael keeps it as an amateur only, but he does sell potions ingredients on the side to a few acquaintances, and that feels good. Some days Raphael wonders if he could do that for a living, but a Selwyn making a living off plants would never be seen as dignified in pureblood society.

Para Sample

Raphael sighed and leaned back in his chair, hands coming up to press against his eyes. Any day where Lily Potter came in to lecture him was an entertaining one but a long one. She’d set back his to-do list for the day back by a solid hour. Any normal day Raphael would have left already, but today wasn’t normal. Things got worse when the phone on his desk rang. He didn’t even want a phone.

“Hello, this is Raphael Selwyn speaking,” Raphael said as he picked it up. Immediately a series of yells came through on the other side. “I’m sorry, Mr. Buchanan. Yes, I understand why it would frustrate you to see a story like that, but I’m afraid we can’t issue a correction of something we printed clear pictures for.” Maybe if his wife hadn’t wanted her affair plastered in the papers, she shouldn’t have been seen kissing her lover in public.

Raphael mostly tuned out the man on the other end as he went on, but eventually he managed to pull himself away from the phone call. As he hung up, Raphael sighed. Maybe he hadn’t quite finished his work for the day, but he was done. Raphael stood and put his cloak back on. He could practically hear his chair calling out to him from home.