Well, all four parts of the CPA exam are now behind me! I just saw my passing BEC score this morning.

That’s a big relief, and it’s been great to be able to just focus on classwork and not have to study for the next section.

Yay!

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?

I’m back from my vacation! While I lugged my Roger CPA Review book with me in my backpack for 6 days, I only actually read 3 pages of it. Tonight I’m trying to finish up the governmental accounting videos, but I’m super frustrated, because even after reading the chapter, the videos make no sense. I keep watching and hoping I’ll absorb something, but I can’t follow what’s going on at all.

There’s nothing for it but to just read the chapter until I get it, but with only 2 weeks to go before I take the exam, my anxiety is growing a bit!

Yesterday I finished bludgeoning my way through Stockholders’ Equity. The fact that it was one of the larger homework sections does not bode well, as I imagine this means I’ll have to know a lot of it for the FAR exam.

I didn’t quite get it when I learned it in school, and even after watching the Roger CPA Review videos, I didn’t absorb, say, the differences between par value methods and cost methods of accounting for treasury stock. What I DID absorb from Roger‘s videos are helpful memory triggers like “cost in-cost out (until retired)” and “par in-par out.”

So I really didn’t figure out how to do it until I did the homework problems, but now that I have a better idea of which accounts are involved, etc, the memory trigger helps me remember how to start.

I’ll be interested to see how this section goes when I start taking practice tests. One of my CPA review books says that many students get through school just half-knowing the material, but for the CPA exam, and especially for the simulation questions you really have to KNOW the material.

If I have time (and I plan to) this is definitely one of the sections I need to go back and review the most, because write now I feel like I’m just making educated guesses most of the time about half the accounts involved in my journal entries!

I’m planning to go to Italy for a couple weeks after my internship is over, but I suddenly realized there’s a lot of planning I still need to do.

Also, spending so much of my internship money is making me worry. Should I save all of it? With compounded interest, a few thousand saved to day can make a big difference in the future.

However, I won’t have much freedom to travel when I have a real job, so do I want to let these last few months of my life where I have time to travel pass me by? Also, if I didn’t spend it on a trip, I could spend a few thousand dollars very quickly if I didn’t stash it somewhere that I can’t touch it. A Blackberry here, a Kindle there… there’s $1000 gone already!

So, this will be my first time really travelling alone, and planning it is a bit stressful. I have been to Mexico, but I didn’t really travel around it, and the little travelling I did was organized by a guide.

Right now, my big dilemma is Rome. It’s a big must-see city for Italy, but it’s a bit out of the way from the rest of my stops, and I’m not sure I’ll have fun in such a big city alone. Also, if I go with a friend to Italy in the future (and I hope to go several times in my life), there’ll be some important bits I haven’t seen yet.

I’ve almost rationalized my strange aversion to including Rome in the trip, haha.

So the first real week of work is done, and let me just say, THE SPEED LIMIT IS 45 ALONG THERE, NOT 35. One day we’re going to stop at a light, and I’m going to get out of my car and TELL you that. (Except that I’m a 5′ tall girl and I might end up dead).

I can tell you want to go faster. You drive 40, and occasionally creep up past that, but then you slam on the brakes, as you realize you’re getting too far from 35. I know you really want the speed limit to be 45, I just don’t know why you don’t read all the many speed limit signs that say 45.

So I’m going to instead figure out your license number and report you to the commuters’ board of health, because it just can’t be legal for you to act so stupid while we’re commuting, can it?