Junior Core

The fall of 2005 was the starting of the accounting junior core for me. I was nervous going in because of the stories I had heard about how hard and time consuming it was. Brian and I agreed that I wouldn't work, at least initially, so that I could focus on school and find out how time consuming the core was going to be.

I was excited to find myself in the smallest section of students. That would mean more professor attention and make it easier to know the other students. We were immediately put into groups of five, to be our group for the entire semester, and given the Waren case. I got along very well with my group, it was new and refreshing to have group members that would actually do work. Up until this point most of my school group experiences involved me doing most of the work. I also go to meet someone who became one of my best friends, Suzanne. We were the only two girls in the group and got along right from the start. The case was very time intensive and we spent many hours together those first couple of weeks getting it done. Suzanne and I would joke about how we saw each other more than we saw our husbands. (Later we were able to get our husbands to meet too, and they got along swimmingly).

I think the case was meant to be a group bonding experience because it wasn't especially hard, it covered fairly easy accounting principles we learned in the past, but it was really detail intensive, and took a lot of time. After that case was over we didn't have to spend so much time together as a group, even though we did a lot of our homework together. Our group got along really well and asked if we could be a group again the next semester. But we were told that we couldn't.

I didn't get along as well with my group the next semester. The second semester you could start to see the drift between the people who wanted to get into the MAcc, who continued to be really over achievers, and those who didn't want to get into the MAcc, who were getting tired of the really intense workload. There was no real drama, but we had some group members that pulled more weight than others. They did all pull through for me when I spent a week in the hospital, and even came and visited me there.

It was a good year and I learned a lot, but I was glad when it was over.