I learned how to do a fucking LOT of statistical shit in my degree. I also learned to get REALLY good at all kinds of shit in Excel.

Guess which helped my career on an actual practical way the most? Guess which made people seek me out at work for help with things?

Sometimes Excel is what's available. Sometimes it's just faster to do it that way rather than code up some ridiculously overdone solution in some programming language. Having both skills is best, but don't shit on opening an excel and just fucking getting it done, whatever it is.

If used right, it can also be a great equalizer with those less technically skilled in your workplace. You can quickly format and tune things and even layer a little bit of vba to make their lives easier without having to get into the complexity of an entire bespoke coded solution.

Also, a reminder for those in the back. For most of us, we aren't in college to learn a specific skill so much as we are there to learn how to be taught. To prove we are capable of taking instructions and producing results as requested.

If you never understand this, then you'll never understand later why you fail to land a high quality job.