I can do this... I think

Confidence is such a nebulous thing - you can't lay claim to it or it will slip away like the morning haze. If you haven't guessed, this semester has been a rough one for me! My summer jaunt into upper division college courses proved to be atypical. And my mostly marvelous success with lower division courses was fun, but fleeting. This stuff is difficult, and it takes focus, and sometimes even that and hard work ain't enough.

Management and Marketing classes are fairly routine and I can keep up as long as I do the readings and spend time really focusing before an exam. Attending class regularly and taking good notes is certainly a key component and I'm glad I was already in that habit. Most of the concepts are familiar and anything new is relatively easy to grasp (and sometimes easy to identify on a test!). At this, the midpoint of the semester, an A in both classes is still reachable (although I've gotten B's on the tests so far).

Financial Accounting, however, is another story. I'm struggling. More than usual, I mean. I'm very frustrated and a little lost and don't know where to go to get my confidence back. I'm just going to have to keep struggling and fighting to get this stuff into my muddled brain.

Went through a couple of weeks where I nearly felt like quitting. It is hard to separate my self-worth from my schooling, after all, this is what I do and I'm used to being good at what I do. In fact, I'm good at a whole lot of things - just not Financial Accounting! The old test anxieties rear their ugly heads and sometimes I can't beat them back long enough to focus on the questions. It doesn't help that all tests are designed to make us rushed for time.

Their justification for this need for speed is that when we are accountants our hours will be billable and we won't have the luxury of being leisurely about our work. I suppose that's true, but when you're just learning the material, it sure feels punitive. And it doesn't help that several students do seem to get it and fly through the tests while the rest of us struggle! I'm certainly not alone, and that helps - a little. My first bad exam grade was typical of almost 40% of the class. But it just wasn't what I'm used to achieving. I can still get a B in the class, but only if I do a whole lot better on exams 2 and 3 than I did on exam 1. To move on to the next level next semester I only need a C in the class, and I might have to be happy with that. It isn't uncommon for accounting students to repeat this class, but I'd sure rather not go there.

However, one of the brighter events of this semester is that I finally have FRIENDS! No, the whole highly-touted cohort thing has mostly been a bust but, thanks to the two upper division classes I took last summer, I've made a couple of very good friends with whom to commiserate and occasionally study. They're close to my age and are both majoring in accounting. We share most of the same struggles either in accounting or the other classes. We share textbooks, when one of us has completed a class the other is just starting, and we also share experiences and advice when we're contemplating next semester's schedule. One has a young family (of teenagers!) and the other is caring for an elderly parent, so that adds depth to the relationship you just don't get from 19-22 year olds!

So I will make it through this semester. And I won't tie my self-worth to my grades! The one saving grace is that I am pretty sure the things I'm struggling with are associated mostly with public accounting (those big companies who sell stock) and not the mom-and-pop private businesses I hope to work with in my career after college. I can do just 53 more days! And then it's on to next semester, which will also be a struggle. But at least it will be a familiar one!

See, I told you so!

I was feeling a little guilty about being a grade snob, but received clear confirmation of its significance during my first day of upper division classes. In our packed Intermediate Accounting class yesterday, the prof congratulated us on making the cut. Seems there were around 120 applicants for the 105 spaces available in the Accounting major and, while the department sets 2.75 GPA as the minimum for admission consideration, the prof said they were cutting students who had as high as 3.1 GPA who also did well on the interview and entrance exam. I know my interview score was good but I barely passed the entrance exam (par, for me!), so having a good GPA was critical. Whew.

Some other interesting tidbits learned at the Cohort Orientation yesterday evening: Of the 450 incoming business students (including all majors), the average GPA is 3.46, which is higher than previous years. Most popular majors: Accounting, Finance, and Marketing. Class breakdown: 54% male, 46% female. And 4.2% are from other countries.

Ready or not, here comes Fall!

Well, it has been a relatively uneventful summer, but a productive one. Made it through with my GPA intact and learned some interesting stuff along the way. Got a bit of a scare in the Cost Accounting class - enough that I think I'm more mentally prepared for the Fall semester than I would have been otherwise. That scare caused me to drop the Art History class so I could focus on MIS, just in case it was as intense as accounting. It wasn't, but that gave me a nice break anyway. I'll pick up the Art credits some other summer.

One interesting event in MIS 304 is I met a fellow accounting student who is OLDER than me! (And I didn't think that was possible! Ha!) She is a semester ahead of me right now but is also working full time and only taking a class or two at a time so by Christmas we'll be "even" and by next summer I'll probably be ahead of her so we likely won't have any more classes together. It's just nice to know I'm not quite as alone as I thought. She's generously loaning me textbooks for several non-accounting classes she has already taken. I'll buy my own accounting textbooks since I intend to keep them, but the rest will come in real handy.

As of now I'm enrolled in four Fall classes, but I fully intend to drop one and just stick with three. (Haven't dropped the Business Communications class yet because I want to get my hands on the syllabus to have a better idea what the requirements will be when I *do* take it.) I really feel I can do so much better with only three subjects at a time. And all three happen to be Monday/Wednesday classes. Eller doesn't schedule anything on Fridays but I've heard it is a popular day for "group meetings" for the classes that have group assignments. That will leave me Tuesdays and Thursdays at home for homework. I like that a lot.

I'm also registered for the 1-credit Golf class but it doesn't start until October and will be just a couple hours on Tuesday/Thursday mornings. I hope by that time I'm in enough of a routine with the other classes that it won't interfere. In fact, it will probably prove to be a nice diversion.

So, starting next Monday I'll have nearly four solid hours of class in the morning and then repeat it again on Wednesday. Intermediate Accounting, Marketing, and Management. Same professor for Accounting as I had during the summer - she's tough but good. I'm excited and hope to learn a lot!

Finishing strong

There's just no feeling like it! I struggled with some of the concepts midway through Cost Accounting class and faltered on two of the three mid-term exams... pretty badly. Three moderately complex homework assignments and two case studies mostly involved spreadsheets and memos - my forte. On those you generally get a grade that matches the effort you put in, so I made sure to do a good job - which helped balance the bad exam grades. However, going into the final exam, I knew I needed 94 points out of 100 to pull out an A in the class. My average on exams to that point was just 85! And the final covered 5 chapters, not the usual 3 or 4.

I got 96! Whew! More importantly, though, while studying for the final, some things began to click into place in my brain and suddenly I saw things a lot more clearly - it started making real sense and the logic was clearer than it had been all summer. Sort of like learning a foreign language - there comes a point where, instead of your brain blowing a fuse trying to manually translate every word into English, you suddenly begin comprehending the foreign words. It's a floating sensation - or at least it was for me when I learned French in my early twenties. For months you feel like you're drowning but you wake up one day and it's almost like they're all talking English. Like you've made a connection to a new part of your brain that speaks French.

It's probably too early to tell if that happened for me with accounting this week, but it sure gives me greater confidence as I move into my first upper division semester in August. I feel so much better about all the stuff that seemed like a foreign language just a week ago. I think I'll be okay!

Change is good, I guess!

Some things are "over" now, I can tell. My Cost Accounting class is evidence that my brain had better be fully engaged for the rest of my academic career. So the first thing that is over is easy classes! While I was in them, none of my classes seemed easy but, I admit, on Finals day when I knew I had done enough work to make the final exam irrelevant (or nearly so) for those 100-level and 200-level classes, I knew they'd been relatively easy for me. I'm looking forward to the challenge of 300- and 400-level classes, but I'm more than a little nervous I can't keep up.

Another thing that's over is the struggle to get the classes I want at registration time. Fortunately Eller pre-registers their students according to the cohort (mornings or afternoons) so the huge headache of spending hours of planning a workable schedule is done! I had learned to have a plan, a backup plan, and a list of fill-in classes in case neither panned out. I also learned to have two computers logged into WebReg at once to help with the inevitable logjam at the server side. Thank goodness that's over!

For the most part I expect my leisure time to be majorly cut back. Taking FOUR hard classes in one semester will dictate that. I've gotten pretty good at budgeting my time and hammering away at whatever is required - homework, reading, writing, memorizing... Could have done better, of course. My hubby has been fantastically understanding when the house is a little wrecked and/or the dishes not done cuz I'm up against a deadline. Fortunately he preceded me in this 'ejucayshon' stuff and knows how much hammering it takes! (And he's an excellent cook! :-)

Internet surfing just for the heck of it is mainly a thing of the past, too. Most of my "computer time" is strictly homework related. A little Lexulous now and then, and checking to see what everyone is up to on Facebook once a day or so... that's about it! (Oh, and the blog, when I can manage it!) Grocery shopping hasn't changed all that much, but I tend to buy more now (fruit especially) to try and cut down those time-eating errands to just once or twice a week. Morning yoga and some evening exercise has to stay, though. Gotta find a way to keep that consistent.

I hope I can keep up! August 24th will be here before I know it.