Monday, March 8, 2010

Personal CGA Update

Last week I received an e-mail asking how my course was going, so I guess it's time for an update.

Well I'll start with a little background about the program and my courses. I received transfer credits from my diploma for four courses, making me a level 2 CGA student right out of the gate. The courses are all correspondence and I'm still working as a software developer, but hopefully not for too much longer. I download the course lectures and listen to them on my phone as I commute to and from work, which is a lot better than attending class. If I have any questions I can post them on the student newsgroup and either the course director or another student will come back with an answer. Overall it seems to be working out pretty well. I really like the fact the course materials are part of the course costs and a mailed directly to me after signing up.

They expect you to work while taking the program and in fact, one of the graduation requirements is 3 years of accounting experience with 2 of them being in higher positions. They recommend only taking one course at a time, and that is all I've been doing so far. It will take me about 4 years to complete this way, but given the 3 years experience necessary, I don't think this will be an issue.

My economics course I took apparently didn't count for some reason, so I ended up having to take it again. This was my first course and is what I'm just finishing up now. In the end I'm happy I didn't get credit, because I learned much more this time around and enjoyed it a lot more. My final for Economics is this Wednesday, so wish me luck.

I like that economics builds off some pretty basic concepts, like people having unlimited wants, but limited resources. Also, if you learned the concepts of supply and demand, you've basically mastered 90% of economics. I now have a better understanding of exchange rates, interest rates, economic profit and so forth. They even managed to change my mind about unions, but I'll just have to save that for another day. I was also glad to find out the majority of economists would agree with me about minimum wage.

I won't bore you with any more details. Now some last minute studying and then on to Intermediate Financial Accounting. Fun stuff!

1 comment:

  1. thanks for the update! sounds like things are going really well! Best of luck on your final! Can we celebrate afterwards? :)

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