Well actually, it’s past midnight. But it’s still Black Friday in California! Enjoy shopping! (Or staying far away from the mall, either/or.)

I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours of Audit studying in over the last few days.

In AUD, they have this term called “those charged with governance” and every time I read it, I feel like it’s similar to “he who must not be named” in Harry Potter. Not that “those charged with governance” is anything sinister, it just sounds odd.

I’m still waiting to hear about my CPA score for REG, but in the meantime, I’ve started studying for the audit section. I’m actually pretty excited to be studying for AUD, because it makes so much more sense to me than tax-related topics, and I just like Audit a lot. The questions require more thinking, and less memorizing – or that’s how it seems to me, because I find it all to be quite logical.

My goal at the moment is to complete one “chapter” of Roger’s CPA Review for Audit each week. There are only five chapters in the Audit review course, so if I can finish all the initial review in 5 weeks, I can actually follow Roger’s full study plan fully this time – ie, I can go through all the multiple choice questions a second time, and practice on the software that comes with the CPA review package.

I’ve made it through all of Chapter 1 so far, and have just finished up the Roger CPA Review Videos for Chapter 2. I feel really good about my progess so far.

The first wave of REG scores for my testing window were released online today. I can’t access my score online, so I might be in Wave 2. Or my online access might not work, because I was never able to log in for FAR either.

Fingers crossed. Either way, I should be hearing soon. soonish. hopefully.

Edit: I’m studying for my tax exam tomorrow, and I’m feeling even less confident about REG now. I wish I had studied for my tax exam before taking REG! The topics I’m studying now are reminding me a lot of the questions that were on my exam…

So, taking REG is over with. After all those hours of studying, it came down to a couple of hours of questions. I don’t feel very good about the multiple choice, but I think that the simulations went okay. According to Another71′s score release predictions, I might just be in the first wave of scores released around November 17th.

So, in total I spent about 87 hours studying for REG, and I felt pretty unprepared going in. I would’ve liked to have been able to practice the multiple choice several more times. REG felt like a collection of random factoids I had to memorize, so I would forget the first bits of information by the time I got to the end. Roger’s mnemonic devices really helped out – if I have to do it again, I’m going to spend a lot more time learning all of those.

Now I get to start studying for the Audit section of the CPA exam. I’ve switched my REG books out for my AUD Roger books. Starting the review for a new CPA section is always a little exciting, because I can plan how much more I’m going to study for this section than for the last!

Hopefully I can have a smoother graph than the one for REG – lots of hours in the beginning AND in the end. Also, I have a week off for Thanksgiving, so I plan to fit in as many hours as possible that week.

I’m taking a break from my intense notecard-writing session to check in here. I’m on the last little bit of my Roger CPA review book, learning about bankruptcy and finishing up the last of my notecards.

I wish Roger made a handy video and review book of how to find an accounting job, and how to keep it once you have it! My professors are totally at a loss for how to help us out, and I can see it’s tearing them apart that their good students are having so much trouble finding work. There are just so few spots available that the firms can pick and choose from the top students, and leave some of them un-chosen.

I was lucky enough to find a firm to work at next year, and I’m very lucky to get one that I’m really excited about, but up until this week, I was feeling the pressure too. However, if I had not received any offers, I had some back up plans, such as applying for IRS jobs in January, applying for any jobs listed in our local newspaper closer to graduation time, and keeping in touch with the accounting firms, especially the smaller ones, in the event that the economy improves by graduation time and their hiring needs change.

I have plenty of time this week, if I focus, to get everything reviewed, but I had hoped to have it all through with a couple weeks ago so I could breathe easy! Unfortunately, life (or school) has a habit of getting in the way. I’m going to remember than when I start studying for Audit next week, and try to really move it along fast in the first weeks. Especially since I’ll have all of Thanksgiving break to study!

Photo by Lusi

I had my last office visit on Thursday, and then I spent from Thursday night to Saturday afternoon at a leadership conference for graduate students. It gave me plenty to think about in terms of setting goals, finding jobs, and knowing myself.

My main take-aways from the conference are that I want to:

• Get involved more, volunteer more, commit to some projects
• Put more emphasis on caring about people, getting to know people

We took the Myers Briggs personality test as part of the retreat, and spent a lot of time talking about how to analyze the results, which were scarily accurate, especially because we got the “Step II” results, which break down the 4 categories into other categories that really capture your personality.

I’m an INTP, which means:

• I’m introverted (only slightly- I like talking to people, but not big groups).
• I use intuition to collect data, rather than strictly sensory information. This means that I focus on patterns and interrelationships, which might explain why tax classes are so difficult for me because I can’t see any rhyme or reason in the tax laws!
• I’m a thinker, rather than a feeler, which means I like to use logic and be objective, rather than letting compassion and tenderness sway my decisions. I would like to move more towards being a feeler. This was the category in which my results were strongest – in the other categories, I was close to the middle, more balanced. I think people are important, and would like to balance them more in my decision-making process.
• I’m a perceiver rather than a judger, which means I am more flexible and enjoy spontaneity. However, I had some strong judger traits too, such as starting early and working with a plan, because I get stressed out starting late.

Has anyone else taken the Myers Briggs? Where do you fall on the scale, and is it accurate?