NJSCPA Exam Cram Blog

A state of limbo

As you may have been able to ascertain from my last post, its been a bit of an odd month.  A whole lot of things have been converging at once, and its made for what I'm sure I'll refer to one day as a "growing experience." It's been rough, but one week from tomorrow, one part of it will be done.

Regulation is again looming, but this time I'm trying hard not to exert the same bleak attitude about it that I had one month ago.  While I haven't been able to spend nearly as much time studying as I'd like, I've managed to find enough places to squeeze in 10 multiple choice questions here and there to add up to something significant.  Its been really weird just trying to "keep it up" after studying so hard for the 4 months prior...on any given night I feel like I've devoted a lot less time, but because I started off September knowing so much, I'm thinking this mental treadmill running will get me as ready as can be on test day. In reality I'm probably no better off than I was in August, but I'll walk out of my local prometric center next week with my head held high. Keeping in this studied-up state of limbo has been a confidence building experience.

The entire process of squeezing the CPA exam around the rest of my life (and certainly at times vis versa) has by no means been easy, but this past month has really been something new and different as its been busy season.  I'd by no means recommend it for your first test (working nutty hours + studying for your first exam), but once you catch the drift of how "you" like to prepare for exams I'll testify that it seems to some degree workable.  With that said, we'll have to see how the results turn out.  I'll try to write once more before next Wednesday. Good luck to anyone else taking any exams this week, I know its about that time for '07 grads (or maybe it has been for awhile - I hear registration times are getting shorter.)

Oh, and a note - not one flash card.

(At least not yet.)

The far side of midnight.

Sorry for the delay between posts, I know many of you out there in internetland wait with bated breath for my next write-up on life, liberty, and the pursuit of a passing grade (really cheesy, i know - i'm very tired and couldn't think of a better way to wrap up that sentence).  I now officially have about 72 hours before sending out our client's returns they filed extensions for in March.  The past week to ten days prior to this has just been a blast, and there should be more fun to come soon.   Aside from working on specialized returns of all shapes and sizes, I've eaten 90% of meals in the off ice, taken power naps in a conference room (off the clock, of course), and frantically checked espn game updates for football last sunday.  Its busy season kids!

  Before entering a firm like mine, recruiters are very up front about a late night being needed here and there. Words of caution: it still drains you down.  Words of advice: Smile, put your head down, and plow forward.  You can keep yourself from being miserable if you can have the right attitude about situations like this, and hopefully your work turns out better for it.

But enough about my mantra on trying to stay happy - you came here for some words of advice on the exam.  In all honesty, my studying has slacked over the past two weeks as work has really ramped up.  I don't have any downtime in the office, and by the time I get home the last thing I want to do is fire up my laptop again and crank out some problems.  However, more often then not, I've been able to force myself into practicing at least enough to keep myself from forgetting everything I knew about reg.  Its only been 20-30 questions a night, but my grades haven't been dropping (and in some cases are improving), which I'm ecstatic about.

Perhaps the mantra does have something to do with the exam.  The studying process is long, winding, and by no means easy - but it can be overcome with a decent attitude and a willingness to work your a** off, knowing that the end is worth the means.  Again, I had no intention of getting philosophical here, sorry about that.  I suppose its alright on the blog, though - its when I start writing my thesis (Topic: puppies <-inside joke, sorry) in the comments section of an arkansas consolidated return that I'll really start to worry. 

To all of you out there in internetland: Have a great weekend.

Quite a bit has happened.

Its been a busy couple of weeks over here, both good and bad.  As I began to allude to in my last post, I found out a couple of weeks ago that I passed bec.  It was a week before reg, and I felt great.  True, it wasn't as tough as far, but it was still a section of this thing I wasn't going to have to sit for again.  That really got me re-motivated to finish strong on the exam - take a few nights, cram, and finish this thing off.  Then, after having waited two months between the results of my first and second exam, I only had to wait two days between the second and third.

I passed Audit too.

I probably couldn't have felt any better...it didn't quite match the feeling of getting that first passing grade, but it was a real rush.  I went so far as to take a night off in celebration. One little measly exam to go, covering tax and law?  Heck, I work in tax for a living!  Feeling like I could do just about anything, I hit the home stretch and started taking my practice tests.  A 65...a 67... a 66...I wasn't used to this.

Let me come right out and say it: reg is a really really tough exam.  I know the above scores are absolute, and the actual scores are relative, but I still wasn't used to this.  Better yet, the tax I see on a daily basis seemed to comprise a really small part of the test - its all personal, contracts, agents, and commercial paper - topics I at best breezed through while I was in school, then rested on my laurels when taking my review course.  Up until about a month ago I thought this was one that was pretty easy to pass, but I've since learned that its the one failed the most often.  I kept on pushing forward, but with my practice scores still consistently in the high sixties, (which really scared the crap out of me as on BEC and AUD I averaged high seventies to mid-eighties), I got pretty shaken up.  To make a long story short, I got gun shy and re-scheduled my exam two days before I was supposed to take it.  I paid the fee and now get to continue talking with you guys for another month or so (October 3rd is my re-scheduled date, right before my NTS runs out on October 4th), as the cramming is going to go on as well.

So, between that and a really long labor day weekend, I'm fried.  Happy with the results to this point, but fried.  More to come, and thanks for the recent comments.  Hope all your studying is going well , and that you got to live a little bit of the end of summer.