Banji Alo

I made an embarrassing mistake in my first data analyst role

It was so bad I kept it to myself for years

My manager had asked me to import about 70 Excel (.xlsx) files into R and combine them

Here’s what I did:

- Open each Excel file
- Rename
- Save as CSV

I was new to R at the time and was only familiar with read.csv

So instead of looking for an .xlsx R package, I manually converted the Excel files into CSVs before reading them into R, which took several hours

I ended up with at least 100 lines of repeated code

I felt accomplished until I explained my process to my manager the next day

He literally rewrote my hard work with five lines of code in three minutes

He used the Excel package and wrapped it up in a simple function

I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself, but I was bold enough to request his code before close of work

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You would encounter these aha moments in your first data analyst role

No problems

Just start and grow

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