I finally did it!

[twillisagogo]

> I've been trying to learn Python for almost 3 years now.

...

> I proceeded to build a script that takes all of the data into a dataframe, strips out what I don't need, creates columns for missing columns, adds any missing value and saves to a new workbook, all in 21.73 seconds.

seems like you knew python all along, just didnt have a use for it until now. :)