BerthaBlog

Wow, what a long week. Two tests, a small presentation for Ethics class, and a major one for Practices. They’re group presentations, because part of what we’re supposed to be learning is how to work in a group.

Until this semester, I’ve maintained the delusion that all my classmates were hard-working, dedicated students who are really interested in learning this material and want to do the best they can in their classes. I’ve largely succeeded because those are the students I tend to spend time with between classes. Now, with the instructors choosing our groups for us, I’ve finally gotten to experience the other kind of student.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before, this is the end of the second year of this curriculum. Most of us will be done after this semester (I still have a few straggler courses to pick up). The Practices class, for example, has a prerequisite of Intermediate Accounting I. Intermediate has a prereq of Principles of Accounting.

Basically, if you’re in this class at all, you’ve had at least two semesters of accounting prior to this. More likely you’ve had three, as this is the last semester of the scheduled curriculum.

So could someone please explain to me how a person could be taking Practices and yet not know where owner’s equity should go on a balance sheet?

This isn’t hard stuff. This is stuff we (should have) learned ‘way back in Principles—the class which is required for all the others. Yet one of my group members, when we were going over the financial statements our group is supposed to be correcting, waved her hand dismissively and laughed “I don’t know where any of that stuff goes.”

Here’s a brief lesson for those of you who have no accounting background. The basic accounting equation, the first thing the Principles instructors write up on the board in GREAT BIG LETTERS, the Alpha and the Omega of accounting, is this:

The balance sheet is essentially a detailed report of this equation. It has three major sections. Can anyone guess what those sections are?

Now class, for extra credit, under which section would you list the owner’s equity?

*headdesk*

One thing about a two-year degree in a (relatively) small community college is that by the end of the second year, you’ve pretty much gotten to know everyone else in your curriculum. Most of the more specialized classes are only offered once or twice a semester, so you’re in all the same classes. At this point there’s a group of six or eight of us who take over a table in the cafeteria around lunchtime to do homework together, compare notes, and generally socialize. Other classmates form smaller groups around the cafeteria (we’re in all the same classes, so we’re all having lunch at the same time) and the groups shift and wander as we go back and forth touching base with each other.

So we pretty much all know what’s going on with our classmates. And I was distressed to hear today that Sweet Studious Boy is considering dropping out of our Practices class. We’re two-thirds of the way through the semester, and all I can think of is all the work he’s put in already. I don’t know if he’s trying to lighten his course load because of problems in his personal life—he’s been very tired and withdrawn the last couple of weeks—or if it’s a conflict with a member of his group.

I also don’t know if I should try and talk him into hanging in there—the group project only has one more week and then it’s done—or if my solicitude would only make things harder for him. He’s very shy; the instructor has been calling him the wrong name all semester and SSB hasn’t protested once (I asked him about it the first week: “It doesn’t bother me.” It may not bother SSB, but it’s driving me nuts).

He may already have done it; the withdrawal deadline is tomorrow.