I have always had a thing for finance and accounting. In secondary school, I was a commerce and accounting major before I made the fated pivot to science. I remember how easy I found my commerce, economics and accounting classes in those days. My exams were always a walk in the park, and I never had anything less than 55 marks out of 60. As I switched to the science class and eventually went on to study Chemistry, I would often find myself reminiscing on the good old days when the only numbers I had to work with were those that involved arithmetic operations.
When I decided to pursue an MBA at the Lagos Business School, one of the reasons this decision excited me was the thought of finally being reconciled with my beloved accounting. This feeling did not change when I went through the brushup material and sessions; I was convinced that I would have the same experience I had all those years ago in secondary school. However, the past three weeks have been a shock.
Naturally, I had expected that the accounting taught in a graduate program would be much more advanced; I just hadn’t thought that it would get so serious in the first few introductory weeks. There are so many different concepts that I have never heard of—the matching concept and going concern are easy culprits here—but have to get myself quickly accustomed to. Otherwise, the class will leave me behind as a result of its pace. Corporate Financial Accounting is indeed corporate for a reason.
CFA is one class I had thought I would actively participate in, but by the second class, I was already speechless. The MBA class has candidates from varied backgrounds, so everyone finds that some classes reflect their strengths and others, their weaknesses. I once joked on a group chat during one CFA class that it was clear to see those who had studied accounting. I knew that the balance sheet accounting I had done in secondary school was no match for what LBS had in store.
Yesterday, I had my first opportunity to contribute to the class when I asked a question about a concept I had come across in Brush-up—accrual-based accounting. I had a follow-up question soon after that and at the end of the class, I was left with a feeling of now truly being part of the class. Thanks to a group meeting right after the class where we further discussed some of the concepts, I think I may be starting to find my way in this ‘turbulence’ as one classmate often says. This doesn’t mean that I’ll start resting on my oars; I’m still far away from where I want to be when it comes to getting a grasp of this topic. On the contrary, I have found that being open-minded and asking questions gets you a long way, and so I intend to do a lot more of that, not just to get the infamous participation score, but also because—as I tend to remind myself more these days—I actually still like accounting.
Let Me Tell You About LBS