Written By Guest Blogger Christine L.
I came to a revelation today; I’m my own worst enemy. That’s not much of a revelation really. I worry about everything. I work too hard. Sometimes I just panic. But that’s standard fare; it doesn’t qualify as a revelation.
I’ve been reviewing FAR pretty much full-time for ten days now, and I still haven’t registered for the exam. Ten days is not exactly a record, but every day between now and the September counts if I’m to succeed with my plan to pass all four parts of the exam in four months. I have a good understanding of the principles, but there are a lot of little details and exceptions (memorizing long lists is not my strong point). After I finished the study units, I sat down with my CPA Review: Financial book and my highlighter and read all the knowledge outlines again and marked up everything.
Now I’m taking additional quizzes. I reviewed my scores in the test prep software and decided that my best strategy would be to practice everything. My scores weren’t quite high enough to give me the margin of safety I want, so I’m setting the software to show me only questions I’ve never seen before. I want to challenge myself and practice all those highlighted details.
Now we get to the revelation. The majority of my mistakes aren’t real mistakes; it’s me getting confused or forgetting something obvious. It really does help, and my scores do go up, when I calm down and remember to carefully read the questions first.
I’m still optimistic about getting all four exams done in four months, although I have fallen behind on my original schedule. But I’m going to work hard this week, put in a solid 30 hours of studying, then reassess the situation. Hopefully, in the next week or so, I’ll be celebrating having taken FAR and be one step further on my way to being a new CPA.
