back to school

I don’t know what possessed me.  I mean, I’m busy enough with work and friends and family and a boyfriend.  I think I was just feeling a little intellectually… atrophied.  My job is challenging but it isn’t exactly rocket science.  Worse, I don’t seem to be able to use analytical and problem-solving skills enough to keep them sharp.  I needed…more.

So, now, on Thursday evenings I find myself in a building that’s like a bizarro version of my high school sitting in an accounting class.  That’s right, accounting.  Whenever I’d say that I’m going back to school, people would ask me (all excited) “ooohhh, what for?” and I (equally excited) would answer, “accounting” and, inevitably, the look of puzzlement crossed their face.  Yes.  Accounting.  I feel like my love for numbers and money has been seriously ignored these past few years.  I mean, the “budget” at work consists of staying under 100%; they don’t even give me real numbers.  Yawn. 
At first, I’m pretty lost.  It’s clear that my fellow students are all in an accounting field of some sort already, most just there for recertification.  My second class is a disaster: I can’t get anything to balance, I keep getting debits and credits mixed up (it’s like the opposite of real life, btw) and I still don’t understand why expenses are considered equity items and not liabilities.  Ruh-roh.  My brain is actually hurting from thinking.  I mean, I have to mutter out loud to myself to keep it all straight.  I.  Love.  It.

This past Sunday saw me sweating over my first assignment.  It’s only worth 5% of my overall mark and yet it takes me almost two hours to finish and another thirty minutes to review and fix mistakes.  It’s a little pathetic that I feel strangely happy at having it all balance.  This is the perfect thing for me – school with no pressure!  Even if I fail, it doesn’t matter! …Not that failure is an option.  My innate competitive nature is already kicking in and I want to score higher than these accountants in my class.

I’m already looking forward to next semester.  Do I want to continue with accounting?  Only seven credits stand between me and my CGA accreditation.  At the same time, this reawakening of certain parts of my brain has also prompted different desires: creative writing, cooking, dancing… there are only so many evenings in the week!

For now, I’m enjoying the moment – the two-handed calculator skills perfected in Calculus, the graph paper, the different coloured pens and the beautiful “aha” moments that give me a little rush.  How I love setting up general journals with their symmetrical debit/credit columns, spending two hours meticulously filling in ledger balances, finally summing up a 64-line trial balance that, miraculously, actually balances. 

Some people have hobbies. I have accounting.