[abby10]

Hi everyone,

I am posting this more to just have someone or someplace to talk about this, but if anyone has any advice or suggestions, I would appreciate that as well. I am scheduled to take FAR Friday, Dec 1st, which is about a week away, and I don’t feel prepared for it at all. I am enrolled in Becker and took the live class for it and after that I have studied for about a month, but I don’t feel like I have done enough multiple choice questions or covered some topics enough. I was originally scheduled to take it in October, but that did not work out because I got so busy during the fall tax busy season that I did not have time to study so I rescheduled. Since I already rescheduled once, I really don’t want to again, so I just decided I would go ahead and take it and see what it is like then maybe next time I will have a better idea of it and can be more prepared. At this point, I am just trying to at least get a decent score so it is not too embarrassing, I really don’t expect to pass. I have already failed REG, made a 69, and really did study hard for it. On FAR, I feel like I am struggling most with bonds, contingencies, premiums & warranties, foreign currencies, basically the last sections of the FAR book I feel like I have just not had enough time with that material. There is just so much to FAR that I feel like once I learn something and do understand it, it is easy to forget it because I am trying to learn and remember so much.

Why I am in this situation in the first place:
This past year has been fairly stressful and has made me wonder if accounting is even right for me even though I love the field. Accounting was a career change for me, I used to work in a support role in wealth management administrating customer accounts and handling the trading requests. My bachelor’s degree is in journalism. To make a long story short (or try to), I was considering a career change and wanted to go into accounting because I had worked with some of my firm’s client’s accountants on projects for them and really grew to respect the accountants and their work. I went back to school for a master’s degree in accounting, which I think was my first mistake, looking back, I think another bachelor’s would have made more sense. I don’t feel like there were enough fundamental, leveling courses in my master’s program to really prepare me for the advanced classes and I feel like I just missed a lot of the fundamental information I should have learned and I struggled in the program (ended up with 3.42 GPA). I just graduated back in May of this year. I started off as a tax staff at my firm and have been there about 3 years, I got transitioned this year to a more administrative, project coordinator type of roll because I did not make senior (two other people were let go this year for performance issues/not listening to management) so I feel fortunate to still have a job. I agree with management on my transition because I know I was struggling to handle the advanced work and at least I still do get to do some tax work in my current role. I really do like my firm and my co-workers and management likes me and they love the administrative work I can do and so for now I have decided to just accept the role and keep studying for the CPA exam and trying to improve my accounting and tax skills. I love accounting and want to stay in it, but do sometimes feel less accomplished compared to my co-workers because they have been able to move up. I don’t want to stay in admin forever and would like to move up someday too. All of these things have just made it so hard to focus on the CPA exam and preparing for it and now I have one week to review the last part of the book and try to remember everything I’ve already been over. I do have next week off of work on vacation, so that will likely help a little. If anyone has any tips, I would appreciate it and thanks for listening 🙂

[smart]

I am preparing to retake FAR too in January. need a TEAM! If someone is on the same boat with me, do let me know.

[PonyUP]

I can only speak to my personal experience from mistakes. I qualified to sit back in 1989. Ouch yes some of you were not born.

If I had just sat for a test, even if I failed it would have benefited me 30 years latter.

This is because most states have a grandfather clause. If I had sat some states would have granted me leniency on new requirements. I talked to the board (Texas) and they confirmed it.

My advice to everyone is just sit for one exam. Even if you are not 100% ready. The board is more favorable to people coming back and trying to become certified.

[Author]

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