Wednesday, December 09, 2009

After the accounting exam

Well, my accountancy exam has been and gone. It was much easier than I expected, for which I am truly grateful. The exam consisted of two sections: one part multiple choice, and one part containing two scenarios which have to be dealt with in depth. The 30 multiple choice questions covered most of the syllabus, and some were harder than I expected, but none of them were really hard. Theoretically, an hour and a half should be devoted to this section; I finished after an hour, and that included checking the answers.

The two in depth questions were much easier than I expected - or putting it another way, they were in areas which I know very well. I had been expecting a question about cash flow statements, which is a subject which I haven't grasped very well and so I have devoted a fair amount of time over the past week to solving questions in this area. My hopes were dashed - darn! - when it turned out that the first questions was simple accounting: create a balance sheet from opening balances and a series of transactions, some of which were given and some had to be deduced. Once the transactions had been recorded, one had to make a profit and loss account from them, as well as a trial balance. Solid work, but straightforward. After that, one had to comment on the financial state of the balance sheet - not very good; the company's current liabilities outweigh their assets.

The second question was even easier, if that's possible: a group of people want to put on a theatrical show which runs for a week. The theatre costs so much, the programmes cost, the theatre staff cost, etc. If the theatre seats 800 people and they expect 50% capacity on two days, 60% on another two days and 100% for the remaining performances, what is their financial status if a ticket costs 12 pounds? If a ticket costs 16 pounds? How many tickets do they need to sell to break even? I solved a very similar question to this a few months ago and the memory stayed in my mind; as it happened, one of the practice questions which I solved yesterday was a simpler version of this question (a group of students want to hold an end of term party).

Unfortunately, I won't get the results for another two months, but I am very optimistic about my chances. Actually, there are only passes and fails; a pass is 50%, and theoretically there is no difference between a pass at 51% and a pass at 90%. Maybe a future employer will want to look at the actual marks attained, but in my case, that would seem to be purely theoretical. Still, one wants to do as well as possible.

I remarked the other day about the 'fight' between the amygdalae and the cortex in the brain. Their fight was very pronounced today, with the amygdalae saying "check, check the answers", and the cortex saying that I've checked and that it's ok.

I forgot to try out a learning technique which I had read about. One of the few things which I had to memorise was the five advantages and five disadvantages of maintaining a budget, as I was convinced that there would be an in-depth question about budgets, and knowing the above ten words would give me ten marks. The technique states to place a little perfume on the back of one's hand when learning the material, and to place the same perfume on the hand when sitting the exam. It is well known that smells are a key to memories (the smell of eucalyptus trees in the damp always brings to mind Army basic training), so this perfume smell is supposed to unlock the memory of the learnt material. As I say, I forgot to try the technique, and anyway we only had a few multiple choice questions about budgets, which was really variance analysis.

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