Back to school: week 0
Jan. 5th, 2008 01:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eveglassConcordia's semester started up on Thursday, which meant it was back to school for me. Though I would normally be taking three classes, one was cancelled, leaving me with two classes taken and one MIA until Tuesday.
In the morning was ACCO 230 -- Introduction to Financial Accounting. As I understand it, the course is focused almost exclusively on creating and analysing financial reports. Though I've been told by numerous people that accounting is boring, I'm still in the "wow, look at all the new and nifty information!" phase. After a single day, all the material is fresh and (almost) completely new. The book I read last year about reading financial reports meant that I was not completely lost and could, in fact, follow along fairly well. This pleases me.
The prof, a retired bank manager, seems to really know his stuff. He's engaging, throws in a lot of anecdotes, and seems to really love his subject. As a bonus, unlike all my history classes to date, he writes the notes on the blackboard, so all I've got to do is copy them down, no critical thinking required.
In the afternoon I had ECON 201 -- Microeconomics. Again, I'm mostly in the "look at all the new stuff!" phase. There's a further bit of jarring, however, as I approach the subject from the basis of much of my reading over the last two years. Many of the books I've read have taken a position deliberately counter to traditional economics: In Praise of Slow argues that people should not try to be as efficient as they can, and in fact values the peace of mind that sometimes accompanies inefficiency. Deep Economy argues that there should be more to economics than monetary evaluations, and that economics should also focus on indicators for the strength of communities. I admit that it's been a strange experience coming into a traditional economics class with all this mental baggage behind me. On the other hand, it will provide for a broadening of perspective, which is always good.
The prof also seems taken with her subject material. More than that, she throws in all sorts of amusing asides. She has a personal beef against banks, due to one of them forcing her to quit in the early '90s due to a labour crunch without giving her so much as a pink slip to get EI. Like the accounting professor, she puts up all her notes for the class to copy down, this time on an overhead projector. Though she says students have previously complained that she has "too many" notes, I found the amount to be quite tame so far -- about 2 pages for an hour of lecturing. In a history class, I could easily have 4 pages for that much class-time.
Outside of class, I managed to buy my textbooks (a whopping $285!), connect my computer to the wireless network, obtain a new ID card (for free, because I had the presence of mind to bring my old one), and get the email address for the person in charge of the writing centre, where I intend to apply for work. I've been a busy beaver, apparently.
The textbooks seem well-constructed, and all have significant online components. I especially like the accounting book (Financial Accounting, 3rd Canadian Edition, by Kimmel et al): it's very well structured, with lots of repetition and practice. I especially liked the half-hour flash presentation that accompanied a section on annual reports.
So far, the work loads seem perfectly manageable. While both classes have a small portion of the mark set aside for "assignments" (10% and 20%, respectively), these don't seem to be particularly difficult. The accounting course apparently will be using in-class work and pre-prepared homework for this mark, and the economics course will have two take-home assignments of four questions each. The bulk of the mark will be made up of the midterm and final exam for both classes. Huzzah for a semester of no essays! Perhaps Daily Breadcrumbs will have to make a comeback?
My one concern so far involves the midterm exam. Both profs have made it perfectly clear that there will be no supplemental exams if you miss the midterm. Instead, if you have a very good excuse, the entirety of your non-assignment mark will come from the final exam. Worse, the accounting mid-term is on a Sunday! Specifically, it's the Sunday right after a local SCA event! Ouch! Oh well, it could have been on the day of the event itself, or the week before when I was planning on being out of town, so it could be worse. Still, I've never heard of an exam on Sunday before. I hope this isn't a common policy.
So that's it so far. Long, I know, but a lot I wanted to remember. If I remember, I'll try to make this a weekly feature of my LJ. Or perhaps I won't. Only time will tell. (And, as my economics professor would say, much depends on what else I could be doing with that time, time being a scarce resource. See, I'm learning!)
In the morning was ACCO 230 -- Introduction to Financial Accounting. As I understand it, the course is focused almost exclusively on creating and analysing financial reports. Though I've been told by numerous people that accounting is boring, I'm still in the "wow, look at all the new and nifty information!" phase. After a single day, all the material is fresh and (almost) completely new. The book I read last year about reading financial reports meant that I was not completely lost and could, in fact, follow along fairly well. This pleases me.
The prof, a retired bank manager, seems to really know his stuff. He's engaging, throws in a lot of anecdotes, and seems to really love his subject. As a bonus, unlike all my history classes to date, he writes the notes on the blackboard, so all I've got to do is copy them down, no critical thinking required.
In the afternoon I had ECON 201 -- Microeconomics. Again, I'm mostly in the "look at all the new stuff!" phase. There's a further bit of jarring, however, as I approach the subject from the basis of much of my reading over the last two years. Many of the books I've read have taken a position deliberately counter to traditional economics: In Praise of Slow argues that people should not try to be as efficient as they can, and in fact values the peace of mind that sometimes accompanies inefficiency. Deep Economy argues that there should be more to economics than monetary evaluations, and that economics should also focus on indicators for the strength of communities. I admit that it's been a strange experience coming into a traditional economics class with all this mental baggage behind me. On the other hand, it will provide for a broadening of perspective, which is always good.
The prof also seems taken with her subject material. More than that, she throws in all sorts of amusing asides. She has a personal beef against banks, due to one of them forcing her to quit in the early '90s due to a labour crunch without giving her so much as a pink slip to get EI. Like the accounting professor, she puts up all her notes for the class to copy down, this time on an overhead projector. Though she says students have previously complained that she has "too many" notes, I found the amount to be quite tame so far -- about 2 pages for an hour of lecturing. In a history class, I could easily have 4 pages for that much class-time.
Outside of class, I managed to buy my textbooks (a whopping $285!), connect my computer to the wireless network, obtain a new ID card (for free, because I had the presence of mind to bring my old one), and get the email address for the person in charge of the writing centre, where I intend to apply for work. I've been a busy beaver, apparently.
The textbooks seem well-constructed, and all have significant online components. I especially like the accounting book (Financial Accounting, 3rd Canadian Edition, by Kimmel et al): it's very well structured, with lots of repetition and practice. I especially liked the half-hour flash presentation that accompanied a section on annual reports.
So far, the work loads seem perfectly manageable. While both classes have a small portion of the mark set aside for "assignments" (10% and 20%, respectively), these don't seem to be particularly difficult. The accounting course apparently will be using in-class work and pre-prepared homework for this mark, and the economics course will have two take-home assignments of four questions each. The bulk of the mark will be made up of the midterm and final exam for both classes. Huzzah for a semester of no essays! Perhaps Daily Breadcrumbs will have to make a comeback?
My one concern so far involves the midterm exam. Both profs have made it perfectly clear that there will be no supplemental exams if you miss the midterm. Instead, if you have a very good excuse, the entirety of your non-assignment mark will come from the final exam. Worse, the accounting mid-term is on a Sunday! Specifically, it's the Sunday right after a local SCA event! Ouch! Oh well, it could have been on the day of the event itself, or the week before when I was planning on being out of town, so it could be worse. Still, I've never heard of an exam on Sunday before. I hope this isn't a common policy.
So that's it so far. Long, I know, but a lot I wanted to remember. If I remember, I'll try to make this a weekly feature of my LJ. Or perhaps I won't. Only time will tell. (And, as my economics professor would say, much depends on what else I could be doing with that time, time being a scarce resource. See, I'm learning!)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 07:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-07 07:21 pm (UTC)