When everything feels urgent, the trick is realizing not everything is equally important. I stay calm by constantly asking: What adds the most value if I do it now?

While working as a Project Intern at Calbright College, I supported a digital literacy initiative that required accurate data collection from dozens of county websites. The goal was to centralize and share verified resources with our student support teams — which meant accuracy wasn’t optional; it was crucial.

The Challenge:

Each county had its own system for listing digital learning programs. Some had outdated links, while others redirected to completely different counties. If even one wrong piece of info made it through, we risked misinforming students and wasting staff time.

What I Did:

Created a master Google Sheet that included validation rules, dropdowns, and conditional formatting to flag incomplete or inconsistent entries.

Cross-checked every record manually and added notes to explain discrepancies (e.g., "Redirects to LA County site" or "Missing program URL").

Used version control via Sheet comments and edit history, so nothing got overwritten or lost.

Scheduled weekly syncs with the team to review flagged issues and update data based on the latest outreach responses.

How I Kept It Aligned:

Built a simplified summary dashboard that pulled clean data into an easy-to-read view for stakeholders — so no one had to dig through raw data.

Maintained alignment across teams by providing a “How to Use” tab with clear guidelines on how to interact with the data without breaking formulas or structures.

Communicated regularly in Slack and via email, looping in county reps when things looked off.

The Result:

We delivered a 100% verified resource list ahead of schedule. Our student services team used the tracker to quickly direct learners to local programs without second-guessing the data. It also helped leadership spot under-resourced counties for future outreach.

During my time as a Project Intern at Calbright College, I was tasked with helping manage and track outreach efforts for county-based digital literacy programs. One of the key challenges was dealing with messy, inconsistent data sources coming from various counties, some of which redirected to other counties or had outdated contact info.

I built a multi-tab spreadsheet system in Google Sheets to bring clarity to the chaos:

🛠️ Structure I Built:

Main Tracker Tab – This logged all the counties, direct contact info, websites, and flyer links.

Redirect Log – For counties that redirected to others, I added logic to flag duplicates and note redirection patterns.

Error Catcher – Used conditional formatting and data validation to catch missing fields or inconsistent entries (e.g., links that weren’t URLs or phone numbers in the wrong format).

Progress Tracker – Color-coded and dropdown-enabled to show what had been verified, flagged, or needed follow-up.

📊 Key Features:

VLOOKUP and FILTER formulas to connect data across tabs and prevent manual re-entry.

Timestamp system using Google Apps Script to auto-record when updates were made.

Built-in instructions for future users (so the next intern wouldn’t hate me).

💡 Outcome:

Cut manual review time by 40%.

Gave my supervisor an easy-to-read overview of county status with a dashboard summary.

Helped our team prep for a presentation that illustrated statewide gaps in digital access.

This experience showed me how a well-structured spreadsheet can act as a lightweight but powerful database — and how crucial it is to build systems that scale and make sense to others, not just you.