Finally I'm A Qualified Accountant!

As this Day Zero list was written in July 2010 I had already sat my final ACCA exams, and I was hoping that I had passed them all and ACCA qualification was only short way away making this a fairly easy one to tick off the list... Still I stuck it on the list as it does represent a huge achievement, and there was always a chance I'd fail one and have to re-take!

The thing is, I didn't even mean to be an accountant. I actually wanted to work in publishing or something as I love books! But after leaving school I didn't have much clue about getting myself a job and ended up applying for a purchase ledger assistant as the advert said "would suit school leaver" and dad threatened to withdraw my allowance if I didn't apply for that job!

The rest, as they say is history. I hated the first few months of purchase ledger. I couldn't add up a manual cashbook and I struggled to reconcile anything. I couldn't work out why my boss would like me for a few weeks at a time and then suddenly find all my errors at once until it occurred to me this tended to happen around month end when the accounts were prepared... Then one day it suddenly clicked and everything fell into place.

I didn't start studying until a couple of years later. I was doing a job in Blackpool which was half accounts and half HR both of which I enjoyed. Lots of the people my age in the office were apprentices, earning a pittance while allowed 2 days a week at college and I was quite in awe of their dedication to their careers. When I returned to Tunbridge Wells a few months later I decided to focus on accounting as it had a more clear cut career path, and I started studying AAT in the evenings. I chose AAT because I was fairly certain the proper exams would be too difficult for me.

Doing AAT was a slog. Two evenings a week at college was a big chunk of time to give up, and although I did later switch to mornings, I then had to work later in the evenings to make the hours up. However I finished the three years easily, doing little revision and only needing to do one retake, also making some friends for life along the way. I did have to re-take one exam, although that one was so poorly written they had to re-mark everyones. I still failed after the re-mark... but I choose to believe that was down to an odd paper!

I thought I'd go onto to ACCA and see how it went. My plan was basically to stop if it was too hard! But again, I found it wasn't too difficult, the teachers at BPP were brilliant and although I wasn't getting outstanding results, the passes kept piling up.

The last two papers of Level 2 were suddenly very difficult. The concepts were harder to wrap your head around and you were expected to memorise long formulas that in real life you'd look up on google. Level 3 continued as a struggle with my first failure on the Ethics paper (I have no idea how that happened!) and exam P2 required more memorising, this time of around 20 International Accounting Standards and its only due to the fact my brother will do anything for a free meal, including test me on incomprehensible ISAs that I passed that exam.

Yesterday I passed Ethics with one of my best marks so far, and now I'm qualified. Seven years after I started. (Not six as I posted on facebook, I may have miscounted ahem...) I'm so relieved. Its lovely to think of life stretching before me with no college and no exams. I have a chance now to get on with all the other things I've wanted to do, but studying took up too much of a chunk of time to be able to commit too. Most of them are on the list of course!

I know I couldn't have done it with the friends who drove me to college, those who helped me revise, the ones I knew were praying for me and the ones I didn't know about and everyone who just believed I could it. Corny, but true, so thanks :)

Between The Sunset And The Sea - A Sunset Day

Item 34. Take a good photo of the sunset from my front room window.

This item has been a bit of an going challenge for me. I moved into the flat about a year ago, and for 12 months have been treated to spectacular sunsets in the skies over Tunbridge Wells. Even on the days the clouds don't turn pink and orange, the blue merging from light to dark has been breathtaking.

Can I capture this in a photograph? No. The colours never seem right, I always get too many trees, you can't get round the telegraph wires being in the way. No photo has been quite right.

Tonight I used the theory that if I took lots of photos, at least one had to be ok! And I think its worked. Its not a brilliant photo, the telegraph wires are still in the way for a start, but I do think it might be the best I'm going to get from this specific window.

I spent a much needed calming half an hour gazing out the window, taking pictures and thanking God for the amazing show.

The Chronicles Of Narnia

I'll be honest, this item was added as I got stuck before I reached 101, and I thought it would be easy to do. I didnt have much rationale behind it, except that I remember reading them as a kid and despite weekly Sunday School attendance I didn't pick up on the Christian allegory.

Reading them through, I can hardly remember most of the books. I think I remember The Lion The Witch And The Wardrobe better from the original film. And I don't think I'd read all the books as a kid as I think I found some of them boring. However it could be my memory deceiving me, as I had a cuddly toy mouse called Reepicheep aged 8 yet none of The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader was familiar to me!

I did enjoy the books, they were easy to read, fast paced and did hold my interest. I still hardly noticed the Christian story as there are also a lot of magical happenings.

I'm pleased to have read them again, but probably won't be in a hurry to re-read them. So the box set will probably be passed to someones children at some point as its taking up precious room on my full book shelves!

A Surprise Completion And My First Disappointment

Item 66 was to get a good photo of me and Dan together. The aim was for me to like it enough to use it as my profile picture on facebook for a while.

On Saturday we were a BBQ and my lovely friend Lynda took a couple photos of us, including this one here, and you know what, I like it. I think we've both looked better in photos, but this is the first one where we've both looked good in the same one, and we were both genuinely laughing a lot when it was taken, which I think makes it good. Thanks Lynda!

The disappointment was that we watched number 13 off the top 20 film list 2001: Space Odyssey. Oh my goodness what a load of rubbish that was! I can't tell you what the film was about. There are monkeys. A lot of it is in space. And there was a giant baby. No one said a word. I couldn't discern a plot line. I know I'm a bit traditional, but I like my films with a beginning and a middle and an end. The end can be a little ambiguous, but I like to be sure its finished and not randomly cut off because the budget ran out.

While watching the film, to stop me falling asleep from boredom, I googled the film to try and find out why it is so highly regarded. I still can't work it out. Wikipedia says that Kubrick (the director) always refused to explain what happens, preferring to leave the viewer to work it out for themselves, which I believe reinforces my point that nothing happens.

I'm actually quite sad about this, the whole point of the list is to do those things you don't always mean to do, but don't get round to. Its about grabbing life with both hands and living to your full potential. And I just wasted 2 hours and 20 minutes of my precious Sunday afternoon watching various different film shots of space while listening to some classical music. I don't feel this enhanced my life cultrally at all. I should have watched Wall-e again instead.