An observation on electives, maths and nostalgia

I'm doing an elective project right now, which involves a fair amount of (sadly fairly basic) statistical analysis. While working on said project, I have already gathered some interesting - although unfortunately not very statistically supported, reproducible, nor even remotely topic-relevant - observations.

1. Experience of working with stats in this study does not support findings in the literature.
I remember stats at higher-maths GCSE and AS level as being the comfortable, easy part of maths where it was always obvious what analysis was needed, and the actual mathematical methods were relatively intuitive and straightforward.
In this study, I Wikipedia'd "descriptive analysis" at the start just to remember what methods were available to say, pretty much literally, "look these are my numbers derp derp".
I also later Googled how to plot a histogram when using continuous data, in case I was doing it wrong. I had also counted a few of the cases in two age classes at once.

2. Experience of working with Excel in this study supports previous studies' suggestions that MS Excel is a big pile of poo.
Excel appears to have moved from being a general-purpose spreadsheet and occasionally useful maths tool (back when I was forced to use it for this purpose 10 years ago) into something entirely aimed at producing rotas, expenses records and crappy business presentations.

3. Recognition of the most relevant points of the literature does not correlate with ease in writing an introduction.
I know all about the literature.
Now I will tell you about the literature that relates to my project.
Aaaaaaaaaany minute now.
...
Well... fuck. That didn't work.

4. Recognition of the statistical findings correlates with ease of writing the middle section of the report, but not to a statistically significant level (P<0.05%).
Look, I did numbers!
Let me tell you about my numbers.
Because I did the numbers and I know them.
...
...
Well... fuck.

5. Recognition of the relevant points to raise in the discussion and conclusion is a difficult and multifactorial process.
Recognition of WHAT THE HELL DO I SAY NOW in the discussion and conclusion was hypothesised to positively correlate with the amount of data analysed and relevant literature reviewed; however, initial findings suggest that actual writing ability for these sections appears to relate more to arbitrary factors (author mood, author appetite, current wind speed and direction in Bangladesh, author desire for another cup of tea, religious and ethnic background of desk used, author desire to punch laptop in face it doesn't have).

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Early conclusions of this study:

Electives: great in theory, but a terrible mess once you put a brain-frazzled and partly insomniac student in charge.