Source: Liam Gant, Pexels.

Since I spend a lot of time with young people in an educational and social needs space. Due to this I reflect a lot on my own educational journey through school and afterwards. Common in many people, numerous young people see the mountain ahead of them and not the trail that they have created behind them. Often flabbergasted with a teacher’s ability to transmit information and how much they actually know, students would often remark at particular skills that I had possessed across multiple disciplines (Multimedia, ICT, and Music). I often tell them that I was not a stellar student and that it took me many years to figure out how to successfully translate information to another person, let alone figure out how my brain functions.

Although this post is about my Economics and Commerce academic undertaking, I often think back to my first undergraduate degree – Bachelor of Fine Arts (Sound Design) from Queensland University of Technology (QUT). It was here that I put my imposter syndrome, mixture of traditional and non-traditional learnings, and Dunning-Kruger effect measurement to the test. It was here that I learned how powerful saying, “no,” was and the absolute strength of saying, “yes”. Saying “yes” opened my eyes to opportunities.

Seneca supposedly stated that ‘luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity’. I had my own twist on that. I Two-Faced my own “luck” by pushing myself into social and professional (IT) areas that felt out of my depth so that I could learn more – and quickly!. This led me to understanding how to ask good questions – not ones that could be easily Googled, but engage the recipient in a conversation where they felt heard and create a space for them to express their knowledge. With the first two knocked off that corollary, I just kept my eyes open for opportunity; looking for “templates” where I could take the knowledge that I had obtained and layer it over new experiences. It felt like looking for missing puzzle pieces under a couch for a puzzle from your childhood.

After spending this time with some genuinely brilliant colleagues, I never felt like I was able to measure up to their intellect and experience. I was keen to see where I could progress within a professional realm, but wasn’t sure how to get there. This is why I chose a Dual Bachelor’s Degree at UQ. Economics to understand systems and Commerce to have application-based theories and engaged activities. Getting back to uni felt a bit uncomfortable as I was mid-20s and felt I was completely lacking in the academic realm. Yet another opportunity to put myself into an uncomfortable position to learn more – and quickly!

I struggled my way through the first few years of understanding Mirco and Macroeconomic theory, basic Mathematics (algebra – derivatives, graphing, and logic theory), and finance. However, I started to understand how to study, pick subjects based on my interests and potential (and opportunity-creating) career progression, and signal to people that I had understood the weekly knowledge. Most probably being a case of cointegration, but I believe that once I developed these study skills to a point I became more confident in what I was doing – thereby giving me more momentum to study. This was probably around the time that I took an Intro to Management subject and my tutor, Armit Sharma, developed the tutorials into debate club. Something that I had never done (and actually feared). Once I realised what was necessary for me to do, I felt that these were a piece of cake. I remember these classes fondly and I told him how much I appreciated his impact on my studies and personal confidence.

So, to finish this post, I thought it was an interesting approach to list all of the subjects that I completed at university, but also had descriptions for what they covered. It is possible to use the IMPORTXML function in Google Sheets to obtain this information from the university website, saving me time searching the subject, copy & pasting the text, and formatting it. This process achieved my desired result in less than 2 minutes.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10KJ8r_tIijTLi2FMiusZkA6k-aUolL2gUDsU4wGmXaA/edit#gid=0

Google Sheets Formula Explanation

C2:C: =CLEAN(TRIM(IMPORTXML(F2,”/html/body/div[3]/div/div/div[4]/div/p[11]/text()”)))

• IMPORTXML finds the html code (using XPATH) for the URL in column F,
• TRIM remove the space at the beginning of the resulting text from IMPORTXML, and
• CLEAN transforms the carriage returns/line breaks CHAR(10) (that are not recognisable in Google Sheets) into a space character CHAR(9).

Future adjustments (I could have a go at doing this in Python, but I’d like to figure out a way to do it in Google Sheets):

• If the length of IMPORTXML < 30 characters, then increment the paragraph tag p[#] to the next value until it achieves the Course Description.

After I wrote this, I remembered that Google Sheets allows for LET and LAMBDA functionality. Originally Column C was manually manipulated until the appropriate paragraph was located from the website. However, I have introduced Column D to show how I have it automatically calculated.

Logic for working out LET and LAMBDA functions

• I want to have a counting variable, c.
• I have a URL link.
• This URL link is calling an XPATH structure that is checking through paragraphs divisions.
• I want to check the length of each listed paragraph division.
• If the character length of the paragraph is less than 30, I want to increment the counting variable c, by one. Increasing this variable means that I am iterating through the paragraphs.
• If the character length of the paragraph is more than 30, that is the listing that I will want, I will stop incrementing the counting variable, c, and use that latest updated variable.

Finalised code

After considering this LET and LAMBDA approach, I realised that I could actually utilise the html information and didn’t need to, necessarily, manipulate the xpath information.

Full code

=CLEAN(TRIM(LET(i,IMPORTXML(F2,”//p”),INDEX(i,MATCH(“Course Description:”,INDEX(i,,1),0),2))))

Explained code

=CLEAN(TRIM(

# The purpose of these two functions are listed above.

LET(i, IMPORTXML(F2,”//p”),

# This IMPORTXML will list the entire html webpage, but only the paragraph tags.

INDEX(i,MATCH(“Course Description:”,

# This will index the html, p tags, webpage and then search for the “Course Description:” element within this INDEX.

INDEX(i,,1),

# This has INDEXed, again, the initial i variable from the LET function and its corresponding p tags from the webpage.

0),

# Corresponding to the 1st INDEX function, this finds the exact “Course Description:” match.

2)

# Looking at the html output, there are two columns that are displayed. This will output the second column with the desired content.

)))