Diary: Reg study in 11+ days - Page 2

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  • #848836
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Sometimes I am a little curious about how others study, and I have occasionally seen in other forums an area for members to have their own space to post. I kinda wish another71 had something like that… therefore, in the spirit of getting things started, I am offering up the idea and a ‘starter’ log of my Reg study experience. There isn’t a need to comment; I’m not asking for replies, just laying out my experience here in case anyone is curious.

    My status: so far, while working, I have been able to mostly finish one chapter out of the 8 in the Becker book. I am scheduled to take Reg, my final exam part, on Monday, October 10. I have off from work from now until then, so I can study full-time. This means I have 11 days of full-time study to finish 7 more chapters and review. Can it be done?

    I had decided to take advantage of the time off to see my mom and brother, whom I haven’t seen in a year. No exciting plans, just the opportunity to catch up a little bit in between my study sessions. Other than that, I foresee no distractions.

    General notes: I read a chapter, do half of the related MCQ (every other question), then I do the second half of the MCQ from a previous chapter. If I have enough time after getting through all of the chapters, I do some kind of review, but the review varies depending on how comfortable I am with the material and how much time I have.

    This is what I did today:

    Woke up normal time for me, but it is late in the day out here on the East coast. Chapter 2, first section: while sitting on the floor and working at a low table, finished writing my notes on notecards. Break: Went out for lunch with my mom. At a desk, did half of the MCQ for this section: 87%. Really had a hard time focusing, though, goofed around on the internet a lot. Also, my mom came in and talked at me for about an hour. Break: Dinner. (Granted, I had a late lunch, but yes, that means it took me about 4.5 hrs to do 40 questions. This is not an auspicious beginning. On the other hand, gotta nail the concepts!)

    Chapter 1, section 3 (Ind’l tax: gross income): while sitting a desk, went through the second half of the MCQ. Score on 1st half was 78%, when I finished the 2nd half, overall score was 79%.
    Chapter 2, section 2: while sitting on the floor, read about half of this section. Tired, bored, giving up. Start fresh tomorrow.

Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 31 total)
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  • #854335
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Thanks for the encouragement! It is actually helpful, too – like, oh, people are watching, so you better get back to studying!

    For some reason, A71 doesn't like it when I post to this thread. I tried again to post last night, but it wouldn't stick. I submitted a ticket, but no response yet. I will try and post it now, in pieces.

    #854341
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Today (yesterday, Thursday, 10/6) it was hard to focus. I really should have gotten a lot more done. I started out in a great mood, singing even! There's a song that has been in my head for days, and today I was singing my own words to that tune. (I will try and post the words separately.)

    #854346
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    This is so funny. I am trying to say the name of the song and singer, and it won't let me! What if I put spaces:

    I
    l o v e
    y o u
    b a b y

    by

    F r a n k i e
    V a l l i

    #854349
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Yay! That worked. So that was the name of the song that was in my head. I wonder why it wouldn't let me write that out normally? You guys try it! If you try and post those words, it won't let you! Anyway, here are my own lyrics that I made up and that I was singing to that tune:

    On-ly four days! Until the torture's done
    On-ly four days! Un-til I have won
    On-ly four days, until life be-gins once a-gain.

    On-ly four days! Until the very end
    On-ly four days! Until I see my friends
    On-ly four days, until life be-gins once a-gain.

    Although I started yesterday in a great mood, the rest of the day was downhill from there. I am halfway through chapter 5, which means I have 3 days to read 3.5 chapters. I still think I can do this, though. It might not be pretty, but by golly, I need to pass! I want this constant pressure, this dark cloud following me around everywhere – I want it to go away forever!

    Time to get started. It is 9 am on Friday, Oct 7. Three days to go!

    #854722
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Friday, October 7. Exam is Monday.

    Another day without a shower. I still haven’t even unpacked since I got back on Tuesday.

    I am halfway through ch 6. As per advice received above, I am only going to allow tomorrow for finishing 6, 7, and 8. I guess that means reading only, as I don't think there will be time for notes & MCQ. That leaves me Sunday to review it all. It's a good plan under the circumstances.

    It's midnight. Sleep tight, y'all.

    #855115
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Saturday, Oct 8. Two days available for studying.

    I don't know what's wrong with me. I should be panicking and worried and cramming. Instead I wasted almost the entire day. I just don't care about this stupid test… except I know I will care later, and I am going to be quite upset if I don't pass. So I kept telling myself to get to work… but I didn't. I finished ch 6, which leaves me with just one day to read 2 chapters and review.

    This is an interesting experience. The finish line is right there. Why can't I cross it?

    #855366
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Sunday, Oct 9. Exam is tomorrow.

    It is almost 3:30 pm in my timezone, which means I spent the last 8 hours reading ch 7 and doing half of the MCQ's. Wish I had done that yesterday so that I had time to do ch 8 today. As it is, it looks like I will be skipping ch 8 all together.

    I just took a peek at the REG thread, and saw some questions on topics I know I covered, but have already forgotten. I am going to spend the rest of the day reviewing – reading notes, doing some sim's to get a feel for them, more MCQ, scrolling through the REG thread for tips & tricks and review of concepts.

    I don't know what my chances are. From a completely outsider point of view, I am very curious what my score will be.

    #855549
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Monday, Oct 10. 1:25 am. Test is today.

    I am still reviewing. I would like to go to sleep, but I know if I get a 74 and I didn't put in this extra effort for a couple of hours I will be upset with myself. So I will be pulling what I hope is the last all-nighter (for an exam) of my life.

    I probably won't post again until Tuesday night? I know I will be exhausted this evening and then I am back to work tomorrow. But I'll write about how well/badly I thought I did.

    #1262887
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    So… I am pretty sure I passed. I will post my score after I get it, but that's 3.5 weeks away.

    I ended up taking a nap for 2.5 hrs that night. I was just staring at my notes and no information was penetrating, so I took a nap. I never got to the last chapter, but I did review all my notes once. And by review, I don't mean I just read them, I mean really looked and tried to absorb and remember it. Each chapter took several hours.

    My basic strategy was this: you gotta know this stuff, you gotta understand it. I know a lot of people say, keep moving, there is too much to cover. But my approach is that I do not move on until I *know* it. There are two reasons for this. The first is that if I only comprehend about 30% of a topic, but I have to understand 40% to answer the ‘easy' questions, and 80% to answer the hard questions, well then I won't be able to answer any of them, and that makes all of the time I spent on that topic a waste. The second reason is that if I don't understand it, I won't be able to remember it.

    I also find that if you really take the time the first time, then when you come back to it, it is much easier. There have been topics that I have completely forgotten, like, looked at an MCQ and said, “I have never seen this topic in my life.” And then when I am going through my notes or the book, and there it is! It turns out I'm a liar and I have seen the topic before. But now it is much faster to learn, and now I remember it longer. So if you take the time the first time, then the second time is less of a struggle and stays in your brain longer, and the third time even more so.

    The test itself? I will post this on the REG test thread also:
    I have done well in all the other exam parts, but I have never really been able to say that the testlets got more difficult. The same goes for this exam. I didn't notice the test getting harder as I went, but I feel great about the MCQ. I was very worried before the test because there was so much flipping detail to remember. But I thought the test was fabulously fair in its expectations. I think if my score was based on only the MCQ, I'd have a 98. Although there were questions on the chapter I did not get to, I was able to remember enough from my school days to feel very good about my answers.

    The sim's though, man, I was bewildered by 3 of them. I still think the test was great, I really don't have any gripes about the difficulty or fairness of it. My blowing 3 of the sim's is entirely due to me not knowing those topics well enough. I might not have even blown them- I might have approached them correctly… but I just couldn't remember enough to be sure whether I was doing the whole thing right, or the whole thing wrong. Of the other three sim's, I disliked the research question the most. It took me 45 minutes! I think I put in 20, then told myself to move on, but I had enough time at the end to come back to it. By the end, I am sure I got that one right, but holy smokes I had a hard time finding the information I needed. The last two sim's I felt good about. One, actually, helped me to learn a topic even better than I had understood it before the test, which was actually pretty cool. The book had described the topic, but as I only did MCQ's, I never got to see a whole spreadsheet type of scenario that really tied the information together. I actually had fun doing that one!

    I thought REG was the second hardest topic. FAR was a beast, and definitely the worst. But REG also had so much material and so much detail, and the way some topics like basis or AMT kept coming up but in slightly different ways for personal/partnership/S-Corp/C-Corp, well that just made it a nasty. But I thought it was the best test, if that makes sense? FAR had 6 or more questions that had terms or topics I had never heard of, even checked when I was done and they were not in the book. AUD and BEC had one or two questions that I was like, I'm not really sure what you mean, but maybe I can approach this logically and maybe my answer is good. But every question on REG was on a subject that I had seen. I didn't remember everything I needed to know, which is on me, but there wasn't anything that I thought was BS.

    #1309066
    JLLLLLLL
    Participant

    I keep checking back to see how you did! When does your score come out. Wishing you the best!

    AUD - 80
    BEC - 88
    FAR - 85
    REG - 83
    JL

    FAR - 85 (01/2016)
    BEC - 88 (05/2016)
    AUD - 09/2016
    REG - plan to take in 11/2016 or 01/2017

    #1312553
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    REG score: 90
    Conclusion: Based on the experiences above, it is possible to pass REG in 11 days

    (I don't know how any of the other public accounting firms do it, but in mine we always have to put a conclusion on our workpapers. So the above sentence is supposed to be a joke, made much less funny by my explanation.)

    Yay! I am done with the exams, with the stupid dark cloud following me around everywhere, tainting my free time, making feel guilty every time I made plans. The best part of having to take these exams is when you no longer have to take these exams. My state requires 2 years of experience for the CPA license; I have a little under a year to go. Plus, I need to take the ethics test, so it's a little early to get too excited. Nonetheless: YAY!

    Thank you, A71, for being here.

    #1312621
    Carli
    Participant

    WOW! That's impressive! Congrats!!

    FAR 08/08/2015 passed
    BEC 08/27/2015 passed
    AUD 10/10/2015
    REG ?

    #1312622
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Damn @bet10, that's awesome!! Enjoy having your life back.

    #1312681
    hasy
    Participant

    Congrats!!!! I'm going to read over this a lot so I can pass it as well. 😀

    AUD - 83
    BEC - 80
    FAR - 83
    REG - 78
    BEC - 80 (Roger + NINJA MCQ + WTB)

    FAR - 72; 83 (Roger + NINJA MCQ)

    AUD - 83 (Roger + NINJA MCQ + WTB)

    REG - 52; 78 (Roger + NINJA MCQ)

    Ethics - 68, 96 (how I dislike you)
    -
    This forum is more addictive than drugs. Still returning after licensure.

    Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved - Helen Keller

    -

    BEC 80 (10/23/15)
    FAR 72 (4/2/15); 83 (7/11/16)
    REG 52 (4/28/15)
    AUD (9/9/16)

    Roger + NINJA MCQ + WTB

    #1314421
    vorobjeva44
    Participant

    Wow! This is impressive! Congratulations!

    AUD - 77
    BEC - 75
    FAR - 82
    REG - 81
    Don't be upset with the results you didn't get from the work you didn't do.

     

Viewing 15 replies - 16 through 30 (of 31 total)
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