Pity party

Well, there was a pretty good pity party here last night. Which there usually is after I do terribly on an exam.

I had my accounting exam last night. It did not go well, as you can probably guess.
As I was driving back to school to take it, I could feel all the information I had been studying for the last few hours float away out of my head, much like a helium balloon.

I tried to catch it, but it didn't work. 

It was a long 2 hours, plus the extra half hour I stayed after the time was up. 

All during the exam I was thinking to myself why didn't I study more. Why did I just copy down the solutions to the homework. I screwed myself by doing that. 

So, as I usually do when taking an exam and doing badly, I vowed to try harder and actually read the chapters. Friends have said that in order to do well in this course you should read the chapters, redo the homework assignments at least 2 times and ... something else. But who has, and who takes, the time to do that??  Does everyone do that and I'm the only one who doesn't? 

I know if I DID do that I would probably nail the exams in every class. But I don't want to. But I want to. See, its a vicious circle!!?!! Ugh. 

I complained all of this at my husband and played the pity card. I also tried to convince him a little bit that if I had a rabbit (the neighbors upstairs have the best rabbit ever - she came to visit the other day, plus they've decided to find a new home for her), that I could snuggle the rabbit and not complain to him so much. hehe, while that is true, we did say we wouldn't have pets here. But I figure, when I build her a rabbit condo....such as this one...

Which I found while looking around on Pinterest. Here's the site link BinkyBunny.com

She would be so happy in there and only be a free range rabbit (run around the apartment) about 8-10% of the time. Dunno if I have him convinced. I think not, but I'm going to keep trying. :) He claims its the landlord's fault, and that our friends (whose house we want to move into right after our other friends move out of it - which may not be for a while) probably wouldn't allow an inside rabbit. 

Anywho, I know what my problem is. I know how to fix it. Sometimes that fix doesn't do any good...but I need to try. But I don't want to. But I should. But I'm going to. I want to graduate in December. I don't have room in my schedule to retake these classes, nor the money. 

But its not like I have an internship lined up or anything. I've gotten so many rejection letters. Crap. I'm getting back into the party. Anyway...its all good! 

Study harder dammit!! and keep trying for the rabbit. ;)

Doing homework

I'm doing homework that is due tomorrow.

I spent so much of my time early in this semester finding ways to make homework easier and that would help the lessons make more sense. Which, I did find the solutions manuals to most of my classes this semester. I'm very happy I found them, they show me how to do the work that doesn't make sense in the classroom, and they help me when I get stuck.

But...

Sometimes I use them for evil. And I'm not proud of that.  (Not exams or anything like that...seriously, I do not do that! And I'm not being sarcastic either.)

Teachers don't assign homework to find out the answers, they already know what they are! It's for OUR benefit! And when we don't use that to our advantage, we are only hurting ourself and making it harder for us when it comes to exam time, and in our future careers.

But alas, I need to finish.

Studying Corporate Finance 3.4.18

Even as I type this beginning shpeil I had planned on studying the very finance I'm talking about in this post. But. Spoiler alert! I finished the chapter! A couple days later, but still. And now I'm working on the exercises at the end that we work on during class time....BEFORE we even discuss them in class!  Geez...look at me! Lol.

So, I made notes the other night while I was studying finance because I was having such a hard time and thought this would make it a bit lighter hearted for me, and maybe encourage me to read more because I would have to tell you all about it! (Even though noone knows about me and my blog yet) Without further adew...(adu? adoo?? adieu? Hey, I think that last one is the right one!)

3:30. Reading. Typing chapter notes. Ah man…how many pages left? 24?! What?!

Maybe there are videos for this…youtube. Hmm…these are an hour long. Maybe not so much. 

What about coursehero, maybe there’s something on there with my course and instructor. Never mind. Typing up at the bottom of my chapter notes all this blogging stuff. Helpful to studying, huh?

Youtube again...video: hmm, no fun pictures, dry....bored.  Need some water.

Water in hand. Sit back down at desk pouting like a child. I don’t want to read, its so boring. And I’ve only read 2 pages, and there’s lots of graphs and figures.  Geez.

Ok, forget the videos (close youtube). Just read it quick and focus. Okay!! (determined)

10 minutes later. Doing good… keep it up! Just read quickly and get the important stuff….

30 mins later. 10 pages down (total in the chapter, minus the 3 or so I had read before), sweet. Is this going to do any good? Maybe I’m studying the wrong stuff. I wish I knew what he was going to talk about. Oh wait, I have the PowerPoint that he reads from in class. But sometimes he does different things, and the exams are book based I think, so maybe I should just keep going and get ‘er done. Yep. That’s it. (again, determined)

Read 3 lines, texted best friend about starting this blog. Typed about texting about it. Haha. Reading some more.

5 minutes later. Okay, its 5:34. 34 minutes later than I told my husband I would start dinner. I’ve got 15 pages left I can skim through after dinner and hopefully get the chapter finished tonight and be ready for his dumb, useless lecture tomorrow. 

I hope this air purifier is going to work (my neighbors smoke and it stinks up my study-it sucks bad. I think its weed, but I don’t know what any of that stuff smells like so I can’t be sure. I hate living by other people!) Off to make dinner. (5:41)

8:30 Yum. Pizza pockets with homemade empanada dough.  So good!! Hopefully I don’t fall asleep.

9:25 wanna stop and go to sleep. I still have 9 pages to go. There really isn’t that much reading in there either. Uggghhh… gotta finish!! 

Nope. 9:51. Wanna go to bed now. Not done yet, but I’m ok with how far I got.

Next day around 10:30 am after class: 

Confession: the very brief lecture Mr. Professor gave on the finance chapter made more sense than if I hadn’t read it. Ugh. I hate it when people are right. And I got a C on the exam 2, his curve added 8 points, so in general I did better than last time!  YAY! Just imagine how I’ll do if I actually study before he lectures about it. Fingers crossed!

Off to the dentist to get a temporary crown put on one of my back teeth. boo

This finance class is kicking my butt. But we'll get through it. 

Hmm. I feel like every post needs a picture, but I don't know what to put here. Sorry all!

Background info :)

Okay, so some background. I'm in my mid-30s, happily married, no children. Last year, we had a thriving mini-farm with about 30 goats plus some adorable little goat kids, 20 chickens, some adorable rabbits, and a couple of barn cats. All on 3 1/2 acres of land in Iowa. Life threw us a curveball last year and we decided to sell it all and we now live in an apartment located in a 4 plex in Wisconsin.

We have a married couple with 2 little kids who like to run track and play loudly around the apartment above us and a neighbor to the side of us who smokes something in their bedroom. I don't know what, feels kinda like it might be weed, but I don't know what anything (but some cigarettes) really smells like so its all guesswork on my part. But, the odor seeps through the walls into our apartment, and really really stinks. Candles and Febreze have somewhat been working for the last 7 months, but its harder to study in that room when it smells so awful. But! I finally got an air purifier to put right next to the wall. I'm hoping it does the job.  Hello beautiful...

I am attending a university in Wisconsin, I have this semester, an internship to do, and fall semester, then I graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Accounting. I have plenty of credits to sit for the CPA exam, which is my intention after graduation. I hope to work in private accounting (be an accountant for a company, as opposed to the public) in the future.

That's about it for personal information. This semester, I'm taking 5 classes (16 credit hours) and I'm in week 7 of 17 (that includes spring break so its more like 16). It seems like I try to do everything I can to make studying easier or to get around studying (i.e. solutions manuals to my books, and lately test banks). Where, if I would actually spend the time studying instead of finding ways to NOT study, I would probably learn the material. Which is what I want! I want to know the material, I need to know the material!!  But, I think every student goes through this though but everyone handles it differently. This blog is the story of how I'm handling it.

HI!

I've gotta study finance for class tomorrow, but I just wanted to start this up while its on my mind.

It seems like I try to do everything BUT homework. Perfect example: I just set up a blog to start talking about trying to do better at school, while, if I would just study instead of trying to avoid it, I'd probably do better.

Sheesh.

Hopefully I can finish by Christmas, in spite of myself. Lol.