Day in the Life & Comparing Applications

Day in the Life

I started the day getting up and out of bed, hopping into the shower to get ready for the day. Once I was fully awake, I headed to the kitchen to make breakfast. I started out making a breakfast sandwich with bacon, cheese, tomatoes, and eggs. But as I got cooking, I decided I would forgo the eggs and stick with a jazzed-up grilled cheese for my breakfast.  

Next up to start the day was taking my dog, Poppy, for a walk. Poppy is a year-old Beagle hound mix full of energy, so our morning walks help her get ready for the day, too. We toured the neighborhood, with me thinking about the day and Poppy getting to sniff and stretch.

After walking enough to help Poppy settle down for the day, we head home and I get ready for work. I sit at my desk and start checking my emails and clock in.

A few hours later, I took a short break for lunch. I set up some soup dumplings and rice to steam and took Poppy to the backyard to play while we waited for the food to be ready. While Poppy runs back and forth to me, I also water my garden. With Poppy satisfied, the garden all taken care of, and lunch ready, we head back inside to eat.

After lunch, I work some more, attend some meetings, and finish up the work day. By evening I was ready for dinner, so I microwaved some leftover smoked chicken and fixed a salad to go with it. After dinner, I head back into my office to spend a couple of hours working on my homework before calling it a day and getting some rest. 

Word

When it comes to writing about anything, having a blank canvas to write things out can be a daunting place to start. Word does have formatting, of course, but the formats are not quite as rigid as a spreadsheet or a presentation. With a blank Word canvas, a person can write out paragraphs or lists easily. This can be very helpful when writing an essay for example, as you can just write out the paragraphs easily. When using Word to write this blog post, I was able to focus on the content more than the formatting. This made it easier to list out what I do in a day and write a brief summary of each activity. One downside to this format is it is less interactive than a spreadsheet or PowerPoint presentation. Through Excel, there are formulas the reader can interact with, and in PowerPoint, the reader has to engage with the presentation in order for it to continue. With basic Word documents, it is easier to get across information but can be more challenging to keep the reader engaged.

 

Excel

Excel is good at keeping readers engaged as there are typically formulas for the reader to interact with. This is a pro for the writer, with a list and a formula the Excel spreadsheet is easy to complete and ready for an audience. The formula I added to my Excel spreadsheet was nothing too fancy; it was =SUM(B3:B12) (Microsoft, n.d). This formula summed up the number of hours entered per each activity. A reader could play around with this to test out different amounts of time for different things to see how a daily schedule could be rearranged, which is a plus with Excel. However, that is the limit of the information this spreadsheet is able to provide. It is harder to format wordier descriptions in a spreadsheet, so the details are more limited here compared to Word or PowerPoint presentations.  And as engaging as formula manipulation can be, it does not keep a reader’s attention as much as interesting information does like in Word or a PowerPoint. In my opinion, Excel is better suited for numerical tasks such as budgeting or accounting.

 

PowerPoint

Of all the applications used for this week’s assignment, PowerPoint is the most engaging for a reader. PowerPoint presentations can include longer descriptions than spreadsheets, keep those descriptions short enough to keep a reader engaged, and often include entertainment features like pictures, animations, etc. While this can be a plus for the audience, the writing in a PowerPoint presentation needs to be to the point, so this can be a con for an author who needs to get a lot of information across. PowerPoint presentations are also far more time-consuming than the other two applications, as PowerPoint requires the content of various forms to be formatted in an eye-catching way while still getting the necessary information communicated to the audience. PowerPoint can be more fun for both the audience and the author though, as sometimes animations such as GIFs and pictures can be used to communicate the point across while being entertaining at the same time. This tendency to entertain while presenting information makes applications like PowerPoint quite suited for scenarios such as teaching a class. No matter the subject, being able to present pictures, words, and animations helps teach and entertain a class.

 

Conclusion

            Reflecting on all three application options for documenting a day like a journal entry, I found that the best option is Word for this task. A lot can happen in a day, and spreadsheets like Excel do not offer enough flexibility for writing out detailed thoughts about daily events. PowerPoint is certainly more engaging, yet it is also more time-consuming for the creator while limiting how much written content can be effectively conveyed. Meanwhile, because animations and pictures can be embedded in Word, the creative flair that PowerPoint brings is not completely lost. Ultimately, Word strikes a balance between ease of expression, formatting, and the potential for added media, making it the ideal choice.

 

References

Microsoft Support. (n.d.). SUM function -Microsoft Support 

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/sum-function-043e1c7d-7726-4e80-8f32-07b23e057f89

 

TestOut Corp. (2024). CertMaster Learn Tech+. http://www.testout.com