Month: December 2019

Merry Christmas – now get back to work.

I haven’t been into this blog for a while, been a bit busy with work and a whole heap of other things happening. Just checked out the WordPress Reader and really interested to see that my former student colleagues are back onto the blog as part of their current unit.  When procrastination strikes I will have a quick read and see how things are going.

And that is in fact the root of my problem at the moment, procrastination!  This term is not going as well as the first two, for a number of reasons.  Studying has become a challenge, we have friends living the in ground floor of our house, a family of 5.  Previously I had an area down there as my study space, where I could just get stuff done, without interruption or distraction.  Now that’s not the case and all I have is kitchen table upstairs, where I try and get stuff done while the general chaos of family life continues around me.  The other factor is that I’m just not into the units this term and there’s reasons for that as well.

LAWS20058 is practically identical to LAWS11030, which I did in term 1 when I was on the bachelor course.  It is interesting, but there’s nothing new (apart from the textbook), so it’s not grabbing my focus as much.  I’m most of the way through the assignment and getting my notes in order for the exam and not much else at the moment.  All is this probably just as well as STAT20029 is driving me insane.

This is a unit I am finding a series challenge and making me regret my choices.  I can do the functional maths that I need for work, not a problem.  But if you want me to work out the probability of “woman aged 28 – 55 in the workforce who are married”, sorry I haven’t a clue!  I last did statistics over 25 years ago, and while I understood it enough then, I’m struggling now.  It may just be week 4’s probability section, and I really hope it is, either way it’s been bringing me down.

Which brings me back to procrastination.  I’ve one unit I’m not fully engaged with and one unit I’m finding hard and no real study space, which means I procrastinate.  I write my running blog, I go for runs, suddenly I really need to sort out my sock drawer.  I know I shouldn’t, I know what I’ve got to do, I’m just not doing it as well as I should.  To overcome this though I have been spending entire days at the CQU library in Bundy.  The sad thing is even spending eight hours on a subject it doesn’t feel like it’s sinking in.  Which compounds the issue.  Fortunately they are both open book exams and P’s make degrees so all is not lost.

I spent the day in the library on Sunday and slacked off the last three days, obviously it’s been Christmas, and as smallest childs birthday is Christmas Eve time needed to be spent getting ready for all that and then enjoying the day.   Now that’s all over it’s time to get my act together and get on with it.  After all it’s not going to learn itself.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas.  I going to read my law text book and do some calcs as long as I don’t get distracted….

 

 

hey look a squirrel!

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

It’s Sunday night and week 4 starts tomorrow.  For a number of reasons, some work, some domestic, some just plain stupid, for me this term isn’t going as well as I’d liked.  I’ve taken on two units as I want that piece of paper early next year that proclaims Graduate Certificate on it, as this gives me options in 2020.  However given the nature of the units, this is feeling like a big ask.

Law, remaining reasonably comfortable with this.  Law is law and the structure is similar to the undergrad unit I did in term 1.  The expectations are different though, a different text book, hard copy only, no e-book, which is much harder to follow as it only sights case numbers meaning I need to get on the web with every case mentioned to find out what was going down.  This will make the exam prep very challenging to get the most relevant cases ready for the day.  Not impossible though planning and more effort required.

The challenge is Statistics.

statistics

I last did statistics 25 years ago and when I went into this term full of confidence, I’m not so sure now.  At the end of week 3, we’re now covering topics I’ve never experienced before which need to be presented by hand in the exam and by Excel in the assignment.  So not only do I have to learn a new concept, I’ve got to learn new ways of using Excel.  I’ve probably spent far too much time than is healthy trying to find a YouTube video to enable me to work it out.

It also took me an age (and the support of my wife) to realize that the reason I couldn’t work out the Geometric Mean Rate of Return was because my cheap Kmart calculator didn’t have the correct function button to allow me to do so.  So it’s off to Office Works in the morning for a new one.

So far this weekend I’ve spent about 12 hours in the CQU library and most of that time has been spent doing two assignment questions (which are not yet finished) and watching this weeks lecture.  Not the greatest of learning experiences so far.  It’s now gone 8pm and I’ve had enough, I think I’ve figured out some of what I need and will start again in the morning.

It’s at this time I reflect that, as there are thousands, maybe millions of accountants around the world, they can’t all be cleverer than me therefore this stuff really can’t be that hard.  So challenge accepted and we will continue in the morning.