Mind The Gap

Also known as photos, round one.

Waiting around for the thing to start, I had to take my picture with everyone.

With Ryan:

With Mom and Dad:

With grandparents:

Everyone up on stage:

Speaker (politician):

Some of the family waiting, watching Dad play with that penguin:

About to cross the stage:

I can has?

Wait…what?

Is it just me, or does Grandpa look smug here?

Grades were posted recently for the Spring I term.

Accounting Information Systems: A
Entrepreneurship I: B

Wooo!

This past week I finished all of the work for the Spring I semester. Spring II starts on March 31, but I’m only taking one class so it might not be too bad.

Spring I was pretty hectic, but probably due more to work work than to the school work. I took accounting information systems, and entrepreneurship.

Accounting Information Systems

I decided to take this class because of my recent work on reports from our customer information system that are used in derivatives accounting schtuff. I thought taking the class might help me learn an thing or two about the systems that accounting types use to do the things that they do. And maybe I could also learn a thing or two about “internal controls” that I could apply. I needed to pick an upper division business elective, so this seemed like a good one.

The course description says: “Principles involved in establishing an accounting information system. Included are source documents, internal controls, and the interfaces needed for managerial control of the business. The integration of managerial accounting information needs with the design and implementation of systems is studied.”

My only flub here is that by the word systems, I assumed we meant software systems, and so I had hoped we would be talking mostly about databases, and authentication, and stuff like that, and how those things apply to the accounting world. We don’t, necessarily mean software systems though. Accounting information system could also mean a series of paper files, paper ledgers, and adding machine tape. The term refers generally to the series of processes and pieces of information that move around and get stored during the course of carrying out the company’s accounting tasks. I am aware that my initial hope for more technical content was wishful thinking on my part, because this is a business program elective, not a technology program elective. There was some more general technical content starting about half way into the course, so that’s when my interest level really kicked in.

So, for the first couple weeks my assignments consisted largely of entering data into QuickBooks Online Edition. Point to note here is that the online edition is pretty slick, better than what I expected out of an online ledger/invoice/bank account/etc entry system. I was kind of bored during this part on account of the drudgery, but at least there was that slick UI to check out. The text appears to have been written by a gator fan as well due to thinly veiled references to Gainesville and the Gators (mostly in the screen shots of data that we’d have to mimic as we entered information).

Then we switched from the QB focused textbook to another package, which was basically a business in an envelope. It came with lots of documents (invoices, fake checks, etc) journal and ledger workbooks, transaction lists, and even some flow charts explaining who did what and what the various procedures are. I was scared to death I was going to be asked to enter and file stuff and somehow mail this package back to the instructor.

Fortunately, this was not the case, and instead we were supposed to take the various transactions, look up the flow chart on how they are processed, and identify the internal controls, and control weaknesses, and describe them. Now this was muuuuuch more along the lines of what I was looking for. This made up for the first couple weeks.

The last couple of assignments were also focused on controls, but in those assignments we read a short case study out of a book and then answered some questions about it and gave recommendations on preventing or being better prepared for whatever type of fraud or disaster occurred. There was even a case on disaster recovery!

My inner process nerd rejoiced. I practically even enjoyed the assignments. Insanity!

A++++ would learn again!

Entrepreneurship

Course Description: “This course introduces the student to the process used in the creation of an effective business plan. The economic, social, and cultural impact of entrepreneurship in the United States will be investigated. The analytical tools necessary to evaluate business strategies and creating a market-based competitive advantage will be stressed. Topics such as forms of ownership, franchising, and the analysis of purchasing an existing business will be covered. The students will be taught the basis of developing a financial plan, managing cash flow, and integrating the marketing plan with the financial and legal analysis to produce a business plan.”

The textbook was jam-packed with business examples and all kinds of “real world” information, but there were so many words that I mostly skimmed it. A thorough copy-edit with a focus on paring down would probably improve readership dramatically, at least for us NADD kids.

The aspect of writing a business plan was interesting to me. The incessant desire for it to be in APA format was not. I received a zero on the first assignment for doing it in outline format instead of a normal paragraph format. At the midterm point I was told I was failing the course, but only 3 weeks worth of assignments had been graded and included in this figure (8 week term, so theoretically midterm grade should have included week 4′s work as well).

The syllabus had a requirement to log in to the WebCT site at least 4 times per week, which I found odd as due dates were such that one could log in twice per week to do the assignments by their due date, and thus meet all requirements aside from the 4 logins/week rule. This does not seem to have been counted against me, although after the midterm grade incident I tried to deliberately log in a lot.

Overall I found it kind of awkward and tiresome, which disappointed me because the class had a lot of promise and I started out pretty pumped about getting to spend time creating this business plan that I could later use should I ever venture out as a for real entrepreneur. I think my spiral downward is because I get sort of automatically turned off whenever too much structure is imposed (focusing on format over content, or seemingly arbitrary requirements, KILLS me). I feel like my creativity is inhibited, which causes my giveacrap to get inhibited, and I go into “what will pass?” mode.

Despite all that, putting together the power point to present the business plan for the last assignment was pretty fun, and the business plan itself seems like a valuable exercise. Those items raise my personal enjoyment of the class to D+, maybe a C on a good day. I wonder if the grade I earned will be much higher…

Just got the MIS paper that I wrote earlier tonight back. I got a 100%!!!!

Here’s a copy of the paper in a .doc file (use MS Word, MS Word Viewer, or Open Office to view it).

Wow, school has been really rough the last week or so. Due to my failure to recognize that my online accounting class does not get a spring break, I had to make up a week’s worth of assignments and a test very quickly, and then proceed to the final exam and class project. Tonight I threw together a term paper for my MIS class, and by or before Thursday night I need to take an exam for business ethics. Ick…

Putting on the Ritz last Sunday was fairly lame. All for a good cause, and definitely a magnificient effort. The things that conspired most heavily to make my experience less than top notch were mostly beyond the control of the event organizers. The band was decent, but either their singer or their sound system was having some issues, everything sounded all slurry. The event is set up with tables on either side of the main pedestrian traffic areas, and the patrons schlepp up and down those aisleways to eat and drink stuff. I’m all for working off goodies as you eat them, but it’s not so much fun to do in a place that’s loud, crowded, and has slippery floors, when you are wearing heels. I knew I should have gone with the boots. Before long, Ryan’s knee was hurting, and my feet were absolutely screaming, so we booked it and headed for home. It was something new to do, and we did it, but will likely not do it again any time soon.