A Dose of Reality

After three relatively easy days of classes last week, a nice weekend, and two days of career workshops, reality has officially set in. I snapped out of vacation mode pretty quickly today when I had my first official second term accounting panic attack. I mean, I thought finanacial accounting was hard, but at least with that there seemed to be some hard and fast RULES. Cost accounting seems to be more "anything goes," which seems great at first (no wrong answers... right?!) but then just turns into a big mess of too many options and waaaay too many numbers. So far, my decision after reading every accounting case has been to sell the company and buy a ranch in Wyoming with the proceeds.

Anyway, we have now officially met all of our professors for the first half of the second term (we'll get two more classes after midterms in mid-February) and we've had at least one session of every course. Today started with our first A6 team meeting of the year, followed by our first Operational Finance course. The professor is very tall (and seems more so when you're sitting in the front row) and very engaging. In fact, I was almost interested in finance for a few minutes there. Almost.

After finance came Operations Management and a case about a cookie baking company we are starting in our dorm room in college. Special things happen during class sometimes and today that special thing came from Jill, when she answered that she couldn't mix a second batch of cookies immediately after the first because, in her words, "I'm spooning!" It was just too much for me to handle and next thing I knew, I was laughing so hard I was crying.

Lunch brought my frantic hopes to better understand the accounting case that I'd worked on over the weekend and also last night. And in the end, accounting was fine... I just don't have any confidence at all when it comes to the material and I don't think it's the kind of confidence you can simply convince yourself you have. Or at least, I can't. Anyway, hopefully I'll eventually start to understand this stuff. After all, it's only class three tomorrow.

After Spanish class I attempted the accounting homework for tomorrow with a couple of my team members, Gabriel and Matteo, but I didn't get very far. I did as much as I could and then went to play soccer with the ladies. I think tomorrow I'll play rugby. All the teams are now starting their push for the MBA Olympics, which is in Paris in June. We have won the last three years, so there's a serious title on the line! Anyway, soccer is always a fantastic way to get over accounting homework frustrations.

Now it's time for more case and technical note review and then off to bed, so I can start the whole process again tomorrow!

One more item of note... I would like to say congrats to my dear friend Pradeep, who on Monday received a summer internship offer with Citigroup in London. One day I will film the heartwarming tale of a young IT consultant who moves from Nepal to Barcelona and lands a plumb job at a major international bank. (And if anyone wants to finance it, please let me know.) Way to go Pradeep!!! Rock on!