St Stephen's Cemetery Reaction

St Stephen's Anglican Church & Cemetery:ToadHollowPhoto 

     For the past week and a half or so, in my Archaeology of Death course, we were given an assignment requiring the use of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access. The assignment required the analysis of a fair amount of data gathered from the St Stephen's Cemetery, and an interpretation of that data. When first receiving the database, I did not at all anticipate the reaction I would have towards the information. It was easy enough reading about plot style and monuments, but then came the information regarding age at death and cause of death. Reading about t children and young adults whose lives were cut short made the assignment much more real and personal. The notes section and cause of death sections in the database really made the information seem much more than just information; it gave each member who was deceased, life.
     I do have to say that working with the Excel program itself was extremely confusing and difficult to manipulate (I didn't have Access on my computer, therefore I used Excel solely). After many visits to google and several colourful words getting thrown around, I managed to complete the assignment. My biggest issue would be that the organization and layout of the data after it was exported to Excel from Access was extremely messy and difficult to manipulate efficiently. I ended up opening a clean Excel spreadsheet and choosing specifically which information I wanted to work with and copying and pasting it to the new spreadsheet. Although this was extremely time consuming, it was a lot more organized and linear use of the information given in the original database.