Life @ MAC 1

Well for the lesser mortals like me who need to do a Google search on what does this word MAC means, I am telling you that MAC does not always mean a unit to measure speed of sound. For B Schoolers like us, and who are unlucky enough to make the transition from a career in engineering to a post graduation in business administration I must tell you that “MAC 1” means a first course in Management Accounting. When half the population of the class is from commerce background (one CFA also), you know it from the very beginning that you are out of the top 50% (too much to worry when you have relative grading system in place). So, what’s the solution then?

I was recently complaining to one of my class mates (I recently discovered that he has scored 100% in his undergrad paper of accounts) that this MAC thing is taking the hell out of me. Most of the time I am finding myself lost among the various accounting jargons. He replied that the course is the superset of all that they learnt during three years of undergraduate and the advanced management accounts. And guess what? We are supposed to do all that in three months. This is not enough, the instructor just recently made an announcement that he intends to finish the whole course before august end and that effectively means, two months only. Now, the pedagogy is something like we have to follow a book and then we have slides for revision and then loads of assignments and case studies to follow. And that is just one subject. We have five others too. And it has one of the craziest evaluation systems in place. You don’t get any marks for completing your assignments but you will get a -10 (minus 10) for not completing them in time.

Hey, it just occurred to me that we have a quiz coming up on Monday and well, my life has to really start moving @ MAC 1.