Specify the column types

read_excel(
  "data/students.xlsx",
  col_names = c("student_id", "full_name", "favourite_food", "meal_plan", "age"),
  skip = 1,
  na = c("", "N/A"),
  col_types = c("numeric", "text", "text", "text", "numeric")
)

## Warning: Expecting numeric in E6 / R6C5: got 'five'

## # A tibble: 6 × 5
##   student_id full_name        favourite_food     meal_plan             age
##        <dbl> <chr>            <chr>              <chr>               <dbl>
## 1          1 Sunil Huffmann   Strawberry yoghurt Lunch only              4
## 2          2 Barclay Lynn     French fries       Lunch only              5
## 3          3 Jayendra Lyne    <NA>               Breakfast and lunch     7
## 4          4 Leon Rossini     Anchovies          Lunch only             NA
## 5          5 Chidiegwu Dunkel Pizza              Breakfast and lunch    NA
## 6          6 Güvenç Attila    Ice cream          Lunch only              6