Sunday, January 31, 2010

Major Stress

Pun intended.

Has it ever happened to anyone else that they sit down and think about their major, or their career path in life, and realize that they don't even like it? I've been having that problem a lot lately. And when I'm honest with myself, I have to wonder if anyone in the accounting field ever liked being in school for it. Of the business majors, we're the most demanding. This isn't an opinion, it's a fact. While every other business major requires 15-18 credits worth of upper level, major specific, courses the accounting degree requires 33. Yes, I know, that's almost twice as many.

It's not even that it's just a demanding amount of courses that we have to take, it's the faculty and staff. The upper-level faculty and staff take themselves so seriously, and maybe they've earned it, but when every member of the accounting staff sits there and tells your horror stories about how hard this is, and how hard that is, and about how you'll have your ass handed to you if you make even the smallest mistake, it's intimidating. Not that they shouldn't be honest with you, but if you're going to be honest, be honest about everything. Clearly there must be osmething pleasent about the profession or you wouldn't have entered it to begin with.

It's just so stressful. As I've mentioned a bajillion times before, the Intermediate II class (which, by the way, is harder than advanced, GO FIGURE) I'm in this semester is really demanding. And I feel like it's not a class I can work hard and get ahead in, sot hat I can sit back and have a full day off from thinking about accounting. I just feel like I have to constantly be reading this, or typing up journal entires for that, and while I am a hard worker, I also really need time to just think about other things. And I feel like that is completely natural. However, I'm not sure if it's the way my group works on things but I feel like I'm forced to be ontop of everything and everyone. I don't like it.

Then on top of it being demanding it's not really particularly interesting. I loved my Cost Accounting class last semester because it felt like accounting that was useful to everyone. Everyone needs to know when something is unprofitable, and if getting rid of it is going to harm them more than they would expect. It's in my opinion "The Business Owner's Accounting" but the Financial and Tax accounting, it's taking care of details. It's making sure that the right amount of "money" is put in one place or another. And it gets complicated.... And sometimes you just feel like you know nothing because there are things that you just can't think to ask yourself about a situation. So then you've done everything wrong.

It's just stressful. I really question whether I'm doing the right thing majoring in this. I love working with money and finding out the best way to create something out of nothing (interest), and business ownership. And I really do think that it's one of the best fields to go into if you ever want to own a business, because it forces you to know everything about how businesses work. But at the end of the day, I really don't feel like I like the classes. I mean, you can't really make accounting fun, you can't make it interesting.

I really don't know anymore. I am incredibly envious of people who get to take electives, and classes simply because they're interested in them.

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