Out of the frying pan…….

Just when I made it through three days of a business accounting and finance exam, I am rewarded with a three day work course on, you guessed it, finance essentials! It is actually great fun, because my learning in the field is so recent that I can actually share some really good insights in to what we are doing. The work course is good because it is an insight in to how the global corporation that I work for does accounting and finance, so it is (hopefully) directly applicable to roles I will play in the company, and fingers crossed sooner rather than later.

Speaking of my next project, I still do not have a clue what it is! Well, that’s not quite right. I know what one option is, and have vague impressions about what a couple of other options are, but I couldn’t truthfully say I KNOW what is next for me. Never mind…..I have actually found quite a nice groove at the moment, doing reasonably good jobs at my various roles, and generally winning points all around. Rather nice really!

Study-wise I have one assignment to go to finish my unit, then one unit to go to finish the graduate certificate. Feeling OK about the exam result. I didn’t wake screaming on Sunday morning, so I must have had it under control. I hate waiting for results after submitting uni work, because you never quite know how you have gone until you get that mark back. As far as the exam goes, I’ll be happy with a pass.

On a last note, hope SN’s arm is doing better. Disappointing if it doesn’t bruise really impressively, but the marks left by the Kingswood should be worn with pride.

Cheerio!

Suviving exams

Eyes bulging……coffee repeating……brain frying……..still going.

Early blogging contest

And I do believe with this post at this hour I am winning. Don’t try to beat me……and staying up late doesn’t count. You have to get up early!

42

Don’t take too much notice of the title of this posting. I’m either hoping to solicit unintential blog hits by people searching for the meaning of life, or I’m making comment on how old most people think I am when they meet me (it’s only approximate….some do think I’m older than that….the record is 47).

Today should be a fun day. Apart fr0m all the work and study I have to get done, I have to interview one person, call another in for an interview and make some staffing recommendations to my EIC on who we should move and who we should employ to cover some vacancies in the company at the moment. This is kind of exciting, and makes me think back to when I got my first job in journalism. I’m thinking about the reasons why I was given a shot, because it is a notoriously hard industry to get a start in. I think I’ll give these people their best possible shot if I can keep how I felt (can you believe it is nearly 11 years ago????) at the top of my mind. I wish them luck….and I wish me luck too!

Exam starts in 34 hours – can’t wait!

Cheerio!

Time bandits

Time seems to be of the essence this week. Mainly, the time between whatever time it is now to 4pm Friday when my exam paper gets released and I can get to work is shrinking rapidly and I am still madly reading my resources papers trying to absorb every last morsel of information. When I get 10 minutes of down time at work I have the study screen back up again, desperately trying to calculate the meeting point of marginal revenue and marginal costs to determine the optimal rate of sales or the ideal pricing structure for imaginary widgets. It’s actually more interesting than it sounds. This unit took a lot longer than my previous ones for me to see where the application would be in my line of work. I’ve worked it out now…..the application is about 14 levels above where I sit for now. The upside of all this frenzied study activity is that I have had very little time to think about what my next work move is going to be (see previous post on high-falutin’ corporate stuff). I may or may not get a bit more of an idea on April 20 (that’s one way to get blog hits up that night!) because of various meetings happening on other issues, but I refuse to get excited/anxious/expectant about it because I’ve been there already over these same issues and I don’t think I can afford the nervous energy expenditure at the moment (best to use that for my exam me thinks).

Wow…..these early mornings are great for getting blog entries done. Maybe it’s because the alternative is to walk the dog, and I’m still too lazy. Going to have to do something there soon.

 Cheerio!

Study and fun

The concept of the work/family balance is popular in politics at the moment. I’m finding it a popular topic at home too, mainly because I’m finding it very hard to feel good about it. The balance seems to be exactly right…..for a micro-instant as it swings from one ridiculous extreme to another. Studying a Graduate Certificate in Management (who knows, it might grow in to an MBA one day if I pour enough water on it) is at times enjoyable, and is certainly useful in my job. Am I doing it spectacularly well? Most of the time no, but I’m doing it well enough that it doesn’t become an all-encompassing obsession. I have one inlaw (a very nice man, as it happens) who is studying at the moment. When we try to catch up with him the answer is often something like “he’ll be free in about five weeks when he’s finished all of his assignments and exams”. Now, I do have some admiration for that sort of dedication, but unless you really need the perfection of top marks, is it worth it? I’ve heard exams described as an important learning tool because “life is like an exam – you don’t often get a second chance”. What a load of bollocks. Life might be like an exam, but it’s an open book exam! If you don’t know the answer you can look it up, or ask someone else. The important of post-graduate learning is the building blocks of the subject that you are trying to master – the thinking processes and core principles and theories that enable you to get the right answer when you need it. In my Grad Cert, my two subject marks so far have been 63 (management theory and practice) and 75 (marketing practice). My mark for my first assignment in the present unit (business accounting and finance) was 83 (but I have the second assignment and the exam to go). Could I have done any better in these units and assignments? You bet your sweet bananas I could have! The reality is that each of these results is a reflection not only of what work I have done and how well I understand the concepts of the unit, but also the compromises that I have been prepared to make for the studying process. I will only give up so much family time and work time, so study has to take a back seat at times. Does this mean I will top my class? No. Does it mean I have the chance to remain sane while I complete my study? Probably. Seems worth it to me.

Chocolate and stuff

What is it about chocolate that is just so hard to say no to? Take Easter for example. It is a religious festival thousands of years old (and some would argue older than that). What does most of the Western World do? Eat chocolate.

Sadly, I don’t need a special occasion to eat chocolate. I tend to eat too much of a lot of things, and chocolate is probably one of them. Unfortunately I can resist just about anything except temptation (see previous regligious festival – might be a problem one day). I recently went to my various medical advisers about how crappy I was feeling (see earlier post about medical experimentation) and, much to my pleasure, got a clean bill of health. My GP, when giving me my test results and advising me on lifestyle issues, told me to not waste time on a vigorous get fit campaign that I would only end up hating and turning my back on. He suggested regular exercise that I enjoyed. “If you like playing golf, go and play golf once a week” he said. I asked him if he was medically prescribing that I play golf every week. He told me that I wasn’t that lucky and that he wasn’t going to wear the flak from my lovely wife if I went out and became a regular golfer. I haven’t started an exercise program yet, possibly because I’m lazy and possibly because I’m still so busy with work and study, but hopefully it will get underway soon. I’m certainly heavier than I want to be, and my lovely wife has started her own fitness and health campaign. I really need to follow her example and get off my behind.

Cheerio!

Homework

Homework is a curious thing for me at the moment. I still bring a few work things home, like spreadsheets of proposed budgets for the next financial year so I can smooth out the edges and make sure the toughest budgets are in the right weeks (that is, in the weeks when we have better than a snowball’s chance in hell of meeting tough budgets). But most of the time I manage to get work done at work. So I should, considering that I spend so much time there in my present role.

But there is that other kind of homework, the kind that actually comes with study. Around the time of my last post I completed the first assignment for my Business Accounting and Finance unit (actually, it was the first part of a two-part project). Because this unit is so far outside my usual work experience, I didn’t have my usual confidence that my wordpower combined with my brainpower and my experience would see me through to an edequate result for the assignment. I have to say, I was actually stressing for a couple of days about whether what I had submitted was good enough to pass the assessment. It turns out I needn’t have worried. Either I’m a brilliant accountant and finance person, or my wordpower was at such a peak during the assignment that I overcame all obstacles. My mark was 83 out of 100, a distinction grade, and I was so stoked when I found that out that I was on a high for the rest of the day (not to mention feeling a lot better about passing the unit overall than I had been before).

I’ve got the second part of the project and another take-home exam to go to complete the unit. Believe it or not I’ve had to ask them (you know, the uni-type them) to let me do the exam early because work is putting me through a three-day training course (and yes, on the same subject but from the point of view of how my company likes to do it) on the very same dates as the exam. They will let me, so that won’t be a drama, but you know what exams are like – always a bit of a worry.

Anyway, what is the biggest upside to doing homework? The looks on your children’s faces when they realise that you never really grow out of homework!

Cheerio!