I Started Studying for the CPA Exam?!

About a month ago, I started studying for the Certified Public Accountants (CPA) exam.  This will be the second time I have attempted to prepare for it.  When I graduated from college back in 2004, I immediately began to study for the exam.  I did a CPA exam review course in the final semester of my bachelor’s degree.  I took the books from that course along with a computer software review program I bought and started studying nightly.  I eventually gave up for several reasons:  1) I found studying every night to be difficult, especially as I did not feel like I was making much progress in learning the information, 2) I hated my job and was unsure if I wanted to remain in accounting, and 3) Pennsylvania at that time had an attestation requirement that I would not be able to meet with my then employer.  Overall, I became discouraged about my ability to obtain a license and stopped studying without ever attempting to take the exam.  Since then, I have gained over ten years of accounting experience, a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA), and confidence in my ability to understand the material needed to pass the exam.  I bought a new round of study books, and I have once again embarked on a study program.

Since that first attempt, I have made a number of progressions in my career as an accountant.  I left that first job that I hated so much.  I switched career paths from taxes and small business financials to corporate accounting.  Employed as a staff accountant, senior staff accountant, and senior accountant, I have worked my way through various aspects of general ledger accounting, financial reporting, and management reporting.  Now as an accounting supervisor, I manage a team of three completing the things that I have been doing for the past ten years.  I still have another thirty-some years ahead of me before retirement, so lately I have been doing a lot of thinking about what direction I want to take my career.  I am not particularly satisfied with my experiences in management.  I like the scheduling and training aspects of my job, but I am not so thrilled with the interdepartmental and upward management parts.  Looking at all my bosses’ jobs, I know I do not want to go that direction and have started to vocalize my desire to not be put in the company’s succession plans.  This leaves me in a position of trying to decide what I want to do instead.

An accounting background provides me a range of opportunities that I can always explore, however I currently am considering three tracks.  I could look into remaining as a low-level supervisor or even going back to a senior accountant’s position in corporate accounting.  This is where my experience lies, and I could continue to expand myself by changing companies or positions to be exposed to different industries and specializations.  Or, I could move into a consulting role to do more analysis and project accounting.  Projects or varied assignments would help defend against the repetitive nature of accounting without me having to necessarily change jobs every few years.  Or, I could go into teaching accounting.  I had considered teaching history at a secondary level when initially choosing a career path out of high school.  While I do not feel it prudent to go back to history after so many years, teaching accounting in a secondary or post-secondary setting is definitely an option.  It would further the training aspects of my current job that I like, and remove the corporate management piece that I do not.

I do not have any answers on what I want to do with my career at this moment, but I do think having my CPA license would be beneficial in any of those three scenarios.  At my level, the CPA license is often preferred if not required for new jobs.  This brings me to my current project of studying for the exam.  On some level, I think I am in a better position to pass it this time around.  Even though I definitely do not know enough to take the exam at this point, I feel more confident that I have basic familiarity with many of the concepts I have run across so far.  It does not feel like I am starting from a place of nothing to try to learn the massive amount of material tested.  On the other hand, life is much more complicated now than it was then.  It is so much harder to find study time when I have a demanding job, a husband, and other personal obligations.  I started trying to get in 20 hours of studying each week which is what I remember my professor telling us to budget way back in college.  I just cannot seem to do this.  While I can usually carve that amount of time physically into my schedule, mentally I am not up to the challenge.  So I am cutting it back to 10 hours and trying to decide how to accommodate the reduced hours.  Once I pass the first section, I will need to pass the remaining three in an eighteen month period.  So I need to make sure I feel ready to keep going prior to taking that first big step, even if I need to delay the beginning for a while.  Maybe, I can slowly increase the number of hours without it feeling so overwhelming.  I know I have the option of taking actual classes for it, but I am just not ready to commit to a program requiring attendance.  I guess for now, I just see how I do with my revised schedule and go from there.

Who out there is working to pass the exam too?  Or has already done it?  If you have any tips on how to make that much studying seem remotely possible, let me know.  I really want to keep going this time, but sometimes it seems so hopeless when other parts of my life spin out of control eating away at the hours I told myself to study.

See you next week!