Advanced Financial Accounting

Today I sat for the 1 exam every accounting student in SMU dreads, Advanced Financial Accounting. It has been proven year after year to be the toughest, most challenging and demanding course in the accounting faculty. Being an accountancy student I too had to come face to face with AFA one day. After postponing it for as long as I could I finally subjected myself to the experience of AFA.

Unfortunately for me as I studied more and more accountancy subjects I realized that accounting is not my cup of tea. By year 3 I was 200% sure I didn't want to do anything with the field of accountancy, be it as a degree or as a career. However I stuck to my degree, Bachelors of Accountancy, and forced myself through the accountancy courses. Though I stuck on and went through the courses, I lost all motivation to study. Just getting myself to pay attention during the seminars was a fight of mind over body. Not surprisingly the grades I have been getting for accounting subjects are nothing great. I made peace with this and my motivation fell even more.

With such a mental state regarding accounting and its subjects I can safely say I was not at all looking forward to doing AFA. Alas I had to face my fear and take the class this semester. How I sat through the seminars and the 2 class tests and the final exam I cannot explain. I am just praying I clear the module so I can graduate with my Bachelors of Accountancy degree. The job market is bad as it is, without a degree I can just forget it.

Coming back to AFA, I have to admit it is not all that bad. I enjoyed the finance part of it. I just hated the accounting part. Writing journal entries, making consolidated statements, etc.. just not my cup of tea. I had my final exam today. It was the longest and haziest 3 hours of my life. I have no idea what I did or what I didn't or how I did or how I didn't. I just know I am done with the exam. Now I just pray what I did was enough for me to pass the module and add AFA into my chest of past experiences.

Exams Frenzy

Yikes where does the time fly..

Wasn't it just yesterday that I was enjoying my Chritmas holiday weekend with my girls in Genting? Or wasn't it just yesterday I had started with my Investor Relation classes? Or wasn't it just yesterday that I had my first Tax Planning class and hated it?

All the slogging, all the tears, all the hardwork and all the torture culminate in the 4 exams I will soon be sitting for. I have never hated exams as much in my 12 years of schooling as I hate them in university. The time never seems enough, I never feel prepared enough and the atmosphere doesn’t seem conducive enough!

A semester in SMU lasts for 15 weeks. 13 weeks are for lessons with a one week break in week 8 and week 14. Week 15 is exams week. The 1 week break in week 14 is coined the study break as it is before the exams. It is supposed to give students time to concentrate fully on exams. However I think 1 week is just tooo little, especially with professors stubbornly holding tutorial and revision classes in the same week. Where is the time to sit and down and burry myself in books if I am going to be running back and forth SMU and home?! That is the normal state of things during the weeks of classes anyways. That leaves nothing special about week 14 break week.

Also no matter how much earlier I want to start studying for exams, I can’t.

1. The syllabus doesn’t get completed before week 13, or week 12 at the earliest.
2. There is a rush of project, report and presentation deadlines in week 11, 12 and 13; sometimes even in week 14!

I usually end up staying in SMU till crazy hours in my bid to meet these deadlines

Making the library my 2nd home, I have stayed in the library latest till 3.30am!

So it all boils down to the week 14 where I have to manage/ attempt to cover my studying for all my exams; 4 for this term.

My exams are as such,
2^nd June, 9am: Advanced Audit
3^rd June, 2pm: Ethics
5^th June, 9am: Tax Planning
6^th June, 9am: Advanced Management Accounting

My carrot to survive through the exams is my flight to Sweden on 7^th June!! :D

Taxed by Tax

OMG Singapore tax laws is making me go bonkers! Nothing to do with the country, just the fact that I am unfortunately studying the Singapore tax laws..

It might seem interesting and I might just be. But when it comes to understanding it, remembering it and applying it, there is nothing remotely interesting left.

I thought my Income Tax and GST module was bad. Boy was I in for a surprise when I started the Tax Planning module! Now I am required to know the tax laws and concepts so well that I should be able to plan tax for companies and individuals to pay minimum taxes..

I have Tax Planning class every Thursday morning and there is a quiz each week. I spend each Wednesday frozen in fear trying my best to prepared for the quiz. The irony? Each quiz is only 2%! I am praying hard to survive the final exam. The professor very kindly informed us that the maximum marks a student can get in the exam in 65%. Now if the smartest of the accountancy mugger can only get 65%, I know I should be terrified.

All I know is that I am going to celebrate once I survive this module.

The accounting 'hell' I got myself into

I am a student of Accounting. But the fact remains that I do not enjoy this field of study. This is the very reason why I choose my 2^nd major of Corporate Communication. Corporate Communication is as far removed from Accounting as ever. It is also a field of study I thoroughly enjoy.

As if being forced to study Accountancy is not torture enough, someone brilliantly decided to have all the Accountancy classes at 8.30am in the morning. Each class also has a minimum 50% weightage exam together with disastrous project requirements. Most of the times the projects aren’t even useful and demand insane amounts of time and resources.

The professors too have sworn to be the most boring, monotonous, cynical, evil and vindictive of the lot. The students are no better. They are vicious with their excessive competitiveness and fire to excel regardless of whom they have to remove from their path of success. This deadly combination makes the faculty most unfriendly in general. It also brings about an atmosphere of hostility and Darwinian style fight of survival.

It’s quite obvious I do not have the most raving of views of my faculty peers. As expected of all my friends a bare minimum are from the Accountancy faculty.

It is then a pity that I am expected to sit through 3, 3 hours advanced accounting classes at 8.30am on each Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Most times I have no interest or initiative to follow the lesson. It is at these times that I wonder if I could use this time instead for something more worthy. Especially since I can survive the course without listening to a single word during the class and studying on my own.

It is then depressing to think I have 3 more accounting modules left before graduation. I sincerely wish I had not chosen Bachelor of Accountancy for my degree and gotten myself into this hell.