Dear readers:
I would like to thank all the individuals that have contributed either remotely or up close to the gradual development of The Student CPA. While I am taking a temporary break from my blogging activities, I nevertheless want to reassure the readership of The Student CPA that I have big ideas for the future development of this blog. As of now, I really don't know when I will be resuming my writing, it could be tomorrow or it could be four weeks from now. If this is your first time stumbling upon this blog, please take a few minutes to browse through the wealth of information on display here.
Best Regards,
Narcisse
Posted in Words to the Wise.
By Narcisse
– May 12, 2010
During my years in college, I was very struck by the fact that very few of my peers kept up to date with the then current business news events. I would often find myself sitting in classrooms chucked full of students cluelessly staring at the instructor as she waited for a feedback after bringing up a current or recent business news event. Would one of these instructors have spoken about a reality TV like The Real World from MTV, she would undoubtedly have gotten a more enthusiastic response from the majority of students siting in her lecture. This is typical to our generation: the Millennial Generation or Generation Y. We grew up with computers along with TVs in our bedrooms therefore most of us are more in tune with entertainment related media programming than we are with the news media programming in general. I personally did not have a TV and computer to my name until my first year in college. That along with the manner with which my siblings and I were brought up have somewhat insulated me from the assault of the show business media on Generation Next. I remember I was barely a teenager when I started reading newspapers and news magazines as well as watching the nightly news and documentaries. It is to be noted that without my dad's involvement it would have been nearly impossible for me to make any sense out of all the serious issues I was being exposed to at the time. He always made every effort to speak in a tongue I understood whenever I quizzed him on stories I read or watched that surpassed my level of comprehension. Since those formative years, keeping up with current events in general and business news in particular has become part of my daily routine. As a result, I became a more complete business student than I could have been otherwise. Because of the variety of business stories I came across over the years preceding then covering my college life, I could easily relate to the topics that were being discussed in my business courses. Nowadays, most of the business news information I get is served to me via the web. What else would one expect, I am a member of the Net Generation. Because our generation has a tendency to almost live on the web, I am going to recommend several web based business news outlets that an undergraduate business student can visit couple of times a day to keep abreast of current business news events.
- Online Business news aggregators: Google News Business , Yahoo News Business, and Bing News Business are all three free services that aggregate the top business news stories of the day from hundreds if not thousands of online news sources. The webpages are continuously updated close to real time throughout the day.
- Online Business news videos:
- Business News Network (BNN): This is a Canadian based business news TV network. The website contains dozens of video clips from the shows of the day. Because the US is the number one trading partner of CANADA, this Canadian cable network does a very good job of covering US business news events. They are very thorough in their business news coverage and they ask relevant questions to the guests they bring on the shows' sets. Last but not least there is little advertising. It is really worth checking out.
- Nightly Business Report (NBR): This is the daily business news recap by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). They do a nice job of offering a really fair and balance reporting of the day's business events. You will also find on the website video clips from prior shows.
- Bloomberg News Youtube Channel: Out of the three major US based business news network (CNBC, Blomberg News, and Fox Business News), I believe Bloomberg provides the most objective reporting. CNBC and Fox Business News seem more concerned with singing the praises of big business as opposed to just delivering the news and allowing the viewer to form her own opinion. Anyhow, you will find thousands of videos on Bloomberg News Youtube Channel.
- Reuters Business Video Channel: "Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals." On this website, you will find business news video briefs from the day.
- CNNMoney.com: This is another terrific website with tons of business news videos filed under several subsets: Business News, Markets, Personal Finance, Technology, Luxury, Small Business.
- Business News Documentaries:
- Frontline Business & Economy: Frontline is another program from Public Broadcasting System (PBS) that offers an hour long analysis of the major US business and US economy issues. From America's love story with credit cards to the near collapse of US financial markets, you will find plenty to chew on.
- FORA.tv: "FORA.tv helps intelligent, engaged audiences get smart. Our users find, enjoy, and share videos about the people, issues, and ideas changing the world." On this website, you will find a variety of video clips on a variety of business, management, and economics topics. FORA.tv gathers "the web's largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world's top universities, think tanks and conferences." I recently discovered this website and I am starting to love it!
- Facebook Fan Page Updates: The Millennial Generation engineered online social networks in the likes of Facebook. Many members of our generation maintain a secondary life on Facebook. If you happen to be one of them, I would suggest that you become a fan of the pages of any of the following business news publications: Fortune Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and CNN Money. This way, all business news updates will be published on your wall so you can click on them for further reading.
There are thousands if not millions of ways to have business news serve to you. The examples I provided here offer to the Net Generation a convenient way of accomplishing it. Learning business school theories is great however it is even better when you can complement your classroom learning with some real life stories. It is indeed only then that you draw the greatest level of utility from your academic knowledge of the world of business. If you stumble on this post and have taken the time to read it from beginning to end, please be kind to drop a comment.
Posted in Words to the Wise.
Tagged with Bing News, Business Documentaries, Business News, Business News Videos, Google News, Millennial Generation, Net Generation, Nightly Business Report, Online Business News Aggregators, Yahoo News, Youtube Business Video Channel.
By Narcisse
– April 27, 2010
Succeeding in any field of study requires the use of a solid strategy and accounting is no exception. As an undergraduate student in accounting, I many times had classmates in my accounting courses that would vent to me their frustration with their inability to consistently achieve above average exam grades. In response, I would ask them their strategy for studying for the course. In 9 out 10 cases, they had no clearly defined strategy and that's exactly what I call a recipe for failure. Successful studies in the field of accounting require a structured approach. While I never did exceptionally well in college, I was however able to do better than average in all my accounting classes because I developed and adopted effective learning habits very early on. Before going any further, I would like to mention that the study skills I am about to share with the whole world are not a one size fits all. You are thereby invited to tweak them for the purpose of achieving optimum results. With the disclaimer out of the way, let's take a look together at the study habits that enabled me to fare better than most throughout each of my accounting classes. These learning habits were stacked up in four chronological phases: before the lecture, during the lecture, after the lecture, and before the test.
- Before the lecture: Before showing up for every lecture, there were two things that I would do. First, I would read the assigned chapter's opening story. Reading the opening story was very helpful to me because it enabled me to get a good feel for the issues to be discussed throughout the lecture. The other activity that I completed as part of preparing for the lecture was to print out then read the assigned chapter's powerpoint slides hosted on the textbook's website. If any worked problem was included in the slides, I would make every effort to solve it without looking at the solution. By the time I was finished working with the slides, I had become well acquainted with most of the topics to be covered in the lecture.
- During the lecture: I always made sure to show up for the lecture on time and equipped with the chapter's powerpoint slides, the textbook, a basic scientific calculator, a notebook, etc. As I listened to the lecture, I would write anything that the instructor mentioned that was not included in the notes. If the professor singled out topics or types of problems that were highly likely to appear in the exam, I would also write that down. Last but not least, I made every effort to ask questions whenever I felt confused and I could not find the answers in the textbook.
- After the lecture: My first year in college, I had a bad habit of not reviewing my class notes nor completing any additional reading in a timely manner. That strategy seemed to work well until the semester of my Intermediate Accounting I course. The instructor was going through the chapters so fast that my procrastination ended up becoming a serious liability. It didn't take me too long to realize that a change of strategy was badly needed. It is right then that I decided that I was going to strive as much as possible to review my class notes and complete any further reading within 36 hours of the completion of a class session. Additionally, I committed to working out all chapter assigned problems over the weekend. These small adjustments in my study habits turned out to be very instrumental in helping me turn the semester around after I got off to a bad start in my Intermediate I accounting course.
- Before the exam: Once I became accustomed to consistently completing phases 1 through 3, my exam preparation became less tedious. Obviously I still needed to do things like review my class notes, read over the powerpoint slides, and rework some of the assigned problems with higher difficulty levels. I also did put a special emphasis on knowing how to solve every problem worked in class and in the textbook. This is because, from personal experience, in almost 85% percent of the cases, the tests questions will be modeled after the lecture's and or textbook's solved illustrations or problems. To complete my preparation for the exam, I would go on the textbook's website take a quiz and a true or false questionnaire for each of the chapters I was going to be tested on. Not only did this final step help me hone in my exam taking skills, but it did also assist me in assessing my level of readiness for the exam I was about to give.
These guidelines are not meant to apply to very student's situation because learning styles vary from one individual to the other. Nonetheless, any person is welcomed to adapt the study habits I just outlined to her own set of circumstances. If you find yourself reading this post, please take a few minutes to contribute to the discussion by sharing some of the study techniques that worked or are working for you in your accounting courses or in your other business classes.
Posted in Financial Accounting, Management Accounting, Words to the Wise.
Tagged with Accounting Exam Preparation, Accounting Lecture Preparation, Accounting Student, Effective Studying Habits, Study Habits, Study Skills, Textbook's Powerpoint Slides.
By Narcisse
– April 21, 2010
I graduated from college with a B.Sc. in Accounting. I will enter a Master of Science in Accounting program in the Fall 2010. I intend to develop expertise in Fraud Examination and Business Advisory. The Student CPA is a blog that strives to provide learning resources for accounting courses, graduate business school admission tips, information about careers in accounting, and job search strategies.
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