Third week of classes just started, and I feel like a bit of a slacker because I haven’t been updating this blog as much as I would like. There’s a good reason for that though: in the first part of January, my husband decided to change careers. So on top of getting ready for school, we were also getting ready for his transition.
ACCT 6030 – Intermediate Financial Accounting
I was shocked when I got my textbook for this class. I wish I had taken a picture of it, but it was almost three inches thick. Hardcover. The thing weighed almost 6 lbs.
On the first day of class, I learned why the textbook is so massive. It turns out that, at the undergraduate level, Intermediate Financial Accounting is offered as two classes, and generally taken over two semesters. At the graduate level, however, it’s offered as one class, all crammed into one semester. The quantity of content is the same, you just go through it faster. As my professor said, “It’s a whirlwind tour, and you just have to hold on to your hat and keep moving.”
As soon as I figured out that the class, and therefore the book, was designed to be split up into two sections, I took my ridiculously heavy textbook to Kinko’s (Yeah, I know it’s called “FedEx Office” now, but… well, it was Kinko’s for a lot longer, okay?) and had them cut the book in half and spiral bind it. Best decision I could have made, because I’ve carried the first half of the textbook with me to work every single day. I have to read it on the bus to-and-from, as well as during lunch, just to keep up.
The first half of the textbook, spiral bound
Side view, with quarter to reference size
Despite the heavy workload, the class is fantastic so far. The professor is great — a really big nerd about accounting, which I love — and I’m really enjoying learning about accounting in a more detail.
The fact that I’m enjoying the class is good because, apparently, “Intermediate Financial Accounting” is to the Accounting profession what “Organic Chemistry” is to the Medical profession: the weed out class. As my professor said yesterday, “If you can’t make it through this class, the rest of your life [as an accountant] is going to suck.”
ACCT 6070 – Managerial Accounting
My Managerial Accounting class only meets once a week (Thursdays), and I missed last Thursday’s class because I had a nasty cold. 
Even so, I suspect it’s going to be my favorite class this semester. The professor is awesome. He’s like everyone’s favorite uncle or grandparent. He’s got a great sense of humor, he tells great stories, and he’s just generally a really nice guy. I can’t wait to see what it’ll be like when we get into the meat of Managerial Accounting, since all I’ve heard him lecture about so far is the layout of the course (requisite syllabus discussion on the first day of class) and an overview of accounting (to give us a sense of where cost accounting fits into the profession in general).
I can’t wait for Thursday’s class.
Biggest Lesson Learned Thus Far
If you’re planning to go into a Master of Accounting program with little or no accounting in your background, it would behoove you to take an “Intro to Accounting” (or “Fundamentals of Accounting,” or whatever your local community college/university calls it) class at the undergraduate level. Intermediate Financial Accounting at the graduate level assumes that you have some familiarity with basic accounting concepts like
- how to journalize transactions,
- how to close out accounts at the end of the period,
- whether Assets has a debit balance or a credit balance,
- what T-accounts are and how to use them, and
- what the four financial statements look like and a basic idea of how to prepare them.
Since I only really learned half of the information from the undergraduate “Fundamentals of Accounting” class that I signed up for last Spring, I’m struggling a little.
Would my life be easier if I’d made it past Chapter 4 of the Fundamentals textbook? Yes, of course.
Will I be able to manage this course anyway? You bet.
But if I had it to do all over again, I would have finished the Fundamentals coursework last summer, before the my fall semester graduate studies started.
