Self-discipline
This kind of studying requires a lot of self-discipline. I have to take all of my spare time and channel it towards the goal of passing an exam that I will take more than a month from now. I have no accountability to anybody but me. I have no set schedule aside from watching the videos that only get posted once a week. I have to decide what to study, when, and in what order. I have to figure out what works for me and get other things work for me whether they want to or not. I have to take practice quizzes and tests and work random problems in the book and not get discouraged. I have to listen to cds in the car even when I really want to listen to music.
Some days I do better than others, and I’ve found that I do best on my busiest days, because those are the days when I have the greatest sense of urgency. For that reason, I do fairly well at the flash cards in the evenings, because I can only look at a few at the time before catching C as she goes head first off the couch (feet first, child! feet first!). If this particular trend continues, I will be a studying fiend once tax season starts.
Feeling overwhelmed
At the moment, I’m feeling completely overwhelmed by the number of formulas I need to memorize in the next few weeks.
I’ve done a three hour class today, and I feel like I’ve been given a new formula a minute.
This is not the most fun I’ve had all year
Katie took the kids to Bell Buckle this weekend, and I stayed home to study.
Yippee!
The future of learning is web-based
I can’t express how convenient it is to do my CPA review classes online.
When I first signed up for the service, I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to do be in some West Knoxville strip mall until ten at night every Tuesday. But I had no clue just how convenient being able to attend classes online truly would be.
For starters, I’m not even attending the classes. Because the teacher instructs from the seat in front of her webcam, everything is recorded. Now when I sit down to “attend” class, I watch it in archives. I can push pause when I need to go to the bathroom or want to write something down that she said too fast, I can rewind when I miss something, and I can start a class session on Thursday and finish it on Friday.
Pause is a wonderful button. I can’t express how much better learning is when I can hit pause. This morning, I was watching a lecture on capital budgeting. I remember studying capital budgeting (incremental cash flow, oh my!) in college, but it’s been a while. After the teacher laid out the basics, and I had a page of notes, I hit pause, and I spent an hour going over the notes and trying to learn the concept before she went into further detail.
How nice is it to be able to hit pause like that and really learn a subject? How much better is that than sitting in a physical classroom? How much more am I going to get out of the rest of the lecture because I was able to hit pause?
Of course I can also hit pause when I want to check my email or do some blogging, which I said I wasn’t going to do, and now I really need to get back to work.
I have terrible handwriting
While studying for the CPA exam, I am taking a lot of notes, and I am reminded that I have terrible handwriting. As I’ve written before, I very much wish I had better handwriting.
Note to self:
Note to self: if it seems easy, you’ve got it wrong.
This is really hard stuff
I knew studying for the CPA exam wouldn’t be a walk in the park, but I am trying not to be discouraged by the number of times I think to myself “dang! this is hard!”
The fact that a good portion of this is stuff I’ve learned before is only marginally helpful. Yes, I learned how to calculate the 3-factor analysis of factory overhead variances in undergrad, but dang!
