[Anonymous]

The original title to this post was called: “Evil Accounting Profs: They Taught Me Wrong”, but I felt “WHY?” said it all better.

Did anyone else have this experience in college? Your accounting profs were busy and fed up with tending to all their students, so – even in class – if you asked them, “Why do we do things that way?” – they would say something like: “Don’t think – just do…”

Now – I am gearing up for a study session, so I do not intend for this post to be negative at all.

This is my daily affirmation. It is intended to be positive and motivating.

But let me return to the point. Why is the “Don’t think – just do…” strategy wrong study technique? And, if it is wrong, then what is right? I say, “just doing it” is wrong for several reasons.

1.) Accounting isn’t unreasonable, and – if I were to do work that was being scrutinized under a real, live audit – a reckless answer wouldn’t be reflective of proper due diligence.

2.) I’ve always found good business study to be very MOTIVATING to do good work in my life.

3.) Reason is motivation; motivation is power, so I would rather answer based upon a strong reason than anything else, and, while I may have to set aside a lot of stuff, I will only grow stronger through disciplining myself to reason.

4.) My greatest gains in learning, i.e. when I can comprehend something best, occur when I am working off of reason (as opposed parroting something merely memorized or guessed at). Things *** make sense *** when one is being reasonable. My study life takes on meaning when I am being reasonable. I feel justified by a higher power as such.

5.) If you are reasonable, you will go into the exams highly and correctly motivated. And, if I fail to answer a MCQ or SIM correctly, then it is an opportunity to improve my resolves. It doesn’t damage my sense of reason; it reveals a way to strengthen my resolve, my sense of reason, and my overall motivation to pass inevitably becomes stronger.

When I started my first accounting job based upon the teaching at my college, my Boss, a Watt-Sells Winner, (whom btw I am very proud to call my Boss), would often get mad at me for doing stupid stuff. I can’t fathom him sometimes, but he is usually right, so I really do appreciate the correction. One time, when he was trying to “apologize”, I explained to him in a rather ironic manner, “No, no – I would rather have you yell at me than an IRS auditor…” He chuckled in disbelief, but I actually meant it.

He would try to teach me stuff, but he’s a task-master, and he doesn’t have much patience for teaching. Probably the area he was most sensitive to my shortcomings was when he would ask me “Why did you do that…?”, and I couldn’t always explain it. He wasn’t being mean. He was trying to get me to understand how to be reasonable about my work – and even have fun with it, like he somehow managed to do, when he was studying for the tests. After awhile, I realized, when they taught us in school, they had so much to teach us and so many of us to teach – they just had to push us through as fast as they could, and if that meant sacrificing a motivational question, like by explaining why a problem was done in such and such a way – then they’d often times tell us not to worry about it and just to move on.

I don’t know if other students have had that experience. I went to a (very good) community college for a post-bac degree, but my boss went to Brigham-Young, which is one of the top accounting programs in the country. I’m pretty sure they taught him much differently than my profs taught me, so I think the profs and students must have been better motivated, i.e. they understood “why?” much better.

Anyway, I am ready to study now, so I must end this note.

But – if I have left my readers with anything here – then it is not to be despondent in your studies. These exams are hard, but they are not unreasonable. They can’t be. If they were, someone would take issue with the rules they test us on, since they are what govern the economics of our whole society.

So they are hard, but they are worthwhile. Do your due diligence. Be reasonable by making your studies work, and you”ll probably find they work for you.

$.02