[FARE] And the Countdown Begins!...

Actually, I suppose it's already begun. Anyhoo... my FARE exam is less than a month away and all I can remember is that before you close those books, your debits better equal your credits. :|

No, seriously though... I'm behind in my studying. Or maybe I'm over-thinking it and I'm actually where I need to be right now. No, I'm definitely behind.

How I'm studying:

I bought the Becker Final Review - which is actually pretty helpful, they lump material into related groups, which makes more sense, so Chapter 6 could be spread out over different parts because certain sections of Chapter 6 may go with a certain section of Chapter 4 - because I took the Becker CPA Review for FARE last summer so I needed a little bit of a refresher. The Becker system (class, flash cards and final review) helps to re-learn the material and/or jog your memory, but not so much when it comes to questions to practice with. All of the questions show up over and over again, so it's not so much applying yourself to actually understand how to tackle a certain question as it is memorizing the answer since you've already seen it four times. And it's hard to really apply yourself when you know the answer, even if you don't understand the mechanics behind the question. No, Becker is definitely not the way to go if you want thousands of different questions.

For that I have the Wiley CPA Review books. They have other products too, but I bought mine at Barnes and Noble and all they had were the books. Now, these books are designed for intense study, not teaching. They have an outline of and HUNDREDS of questions and at least two simulations for each topic (except for a few) but you won't learn the reasoning behind the answers from this system. Even the explanations will sometime have you saying to yourself, "Ok, you're telling me this is the answer and it's calculated this way... but WHY?" Sometimes the why's are essential to you remembering for the exam. Another downside with this book is that it doesn't come with software (software is available separately), so you have to do all of the simulations by hand. And that can get annoying and repetitive when you have to write out an income statement or statement of cash flows (they suggest setting it up in Excel, but that's time consuming also).

How I'm feeling:

Hmm... this is my second time taking this portion and last time I had two asthma attacks brought on by panic (oh, Lord... if my interest in accounting wasn't enough, now I REALLY look like a nerd). So far, no panic attacks but I am sort of freaking out. I missed it last time by two or three points and I don't want to have to take it again. What if I over-study the wrong thing and miss what I should have done better on? If I don't have this book open, I feel like I'm being unproductive. I take it to work with me and work on it at lunch. I sit in the same spot on weekends and work through several sections of material. If I don't get the answer correct I worry that this is the type of question I'll get on the exam.

All of this stress is CRAZY! I know I'm not alone. It pays off in the long run though... and you know what they say, if it's worth having it's worth working hard for... or something along those lines. I'm just gonna do my best and put the rest in God's hands. Hopefully this is the last time I'll visit this book and I can move on to AUD with a peaceful mind.

What's next?

I passed BEC back in October, but didn't pass any of the rest (actually I showed up a week late - yeah, a whole week late - to AUD January so I never got to take it. So after FARE "take 2", I will prepare for Audit during September and take it in October. Then I'll take REG "take 2" in November. If all goes well I will be completely finished this year. If not, I only have until April 17, 2010 or I lose my BEC credit!

Thoughts?