Professor Elam

Monday Labor Day Sept 2 2013

I have posted a piece on the Proficient Accounting Student on Blackboard. The Proficient Accounting Student has a plan and a routine, and sticks to it. This is also true of professional athletes ans musicians as I noted in the article. 

This morning I was buttering some toast and preparing a great fruit smoothie (strawberrries, matchstick carrots, bananas, and craberry grape juice in the blender with ice, delicious and refreshing in this heat), who should sit down beside me but Bentley our Catahoula. 

Bentley has his routine in the morning as well. Part of that is sitting, shaking hands and receiving a treat, a tasty dog biscuit. When ready for his walk he makes it well known with an audible howl, repeating until I relent. 

I have not heard from any of the students in the Saturday hybrid class but I hope they are developing a routine.   Did you realize that the professional accounting exams are the toughest to pass of all professional exams?

For example on the recent BAR exam for lawyers, Baylor law students scored an impressive 95% pass rate. The accounting students pass rate on the CPA exam was also exemplary, but at 63% it is two thirds the bar exam pass rate. Run your eye down the hyperlink for the reults across the state. Yep, about 50% fail. Which means it pays to be prepared, Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity. 

The resources available to you as a student today so dwarf what I had that there is simply no comparisoin. You have 

flash cards on the textbook site

learn smart on connect

practice exams and m/c on the textbook site

power point slides on the textbook site

Schaums with 400 solved problems

connect to help solve problems

and a textbook with solutions, objectives and illustrations. 

But the probablity distribution of grades today is no different than when I was an undergrad. 

Times change with iPhones, computers, and such but 

People don't change, as Dale Carnegie observed. 

Are you developing a structured system geared towards your success?

Read the chapter, underline points to understand, outline the learning objectives,  watch the power point, use learn smart, attempt the flash cards, practice working the solved problems in the chapter until you master every one without looking at the solution, read how your adopted company treats accounting issues in their financial statements. 

Do not delay, the successful students at all the other colleges in Texas are doing just this. I just directed you to the results, look at them again.  Remember the story of the leopard and the gazelle on the African veldt. 

The gazelle knows that if she does not run faster than the fastest leopard, she will be eaten. 

The leopard knows that if she does not run faster than the slowest gazelle, she will starve.

Leopard or gazelle, start running…..