Introduction
With my background in engineering and a general allergy to accounting and all its disguises; I had a lot of difficulty wrapping my head around it when the MBA started. It was such a struggle that I considered signing up for a beginner accounting course outside school; the workload at school quickly erased that idea from my mind.
How it Started
During brush up sessions I was already having some serious doubts, but was encouraged by the two accounting lecturers who took the sessions. They assumed zero knowledge from their audience and started with the basics. This is where my allergy to accounting started to kick in; I would have to go over materials 4 times to understand them and be satisfied until I completely forgot everything in a week.
How it is Going
Started the first semester with a new lecturer, was scared that he would blast through the course since we had done the brush up. But his patience is what has kept most of the class from losing their minds completely. His patience is actually incredible, I would have snapped if I was the one teaching the course.
Each class starts with everyone silent, then after a while asking “how do we know if it is debit or credit?” Every single class goes this way, as a lecturer I would have banned the words in my own class, straight up forbidden, you say it and you leave the class. But each time he explained it; much respect.
What helped?
Good facilitators contributed a lot to getting past the first hurdles of the course. What I understood after a while was that you must understand the basics before trying to push to more complex things. Accounting itself is simple but if you don’t understand foundational things, progress is actually impossible.
Memory tricks like mnemonics played a major role in remembering foundational things such as; DEAL/CLIP and ALERE. I won’t be explaining them because I’m nowhere near qualified to teach you anything on accounting. Progress right now is steady, nowhere near as lost as when I started, hopefully it keeps going this way.
Cannot forget my classmates, they have all been great. Everyone is eager to help and to ensure that no one is left behind, because we all come from different backgrounds with different strengths. Special recognition to “Rashcash”, she currently has nearly the entire class in a sac and is dragging us through accounting. She is always willing and able to help, at this point she is a second lecturer for the course.
Conclusion
I have some work experience in consulting and run a design business on the side. I have always dodged all the numbers, for my design business I just had a folder on my pc filled with digital invoices and a word document with names of people owing me. That was all the accounting I did.
With just a few months of accounting, I am starting to see why it is an important discipline to understand if you want to run a successful business or work effectively in consulting. Every business is out to make money and to do that effectively, you need to understand how it functions in your business.
Work.