Third Semester Reflections
I approached my second year with a lot more apprehension than my first. I knew courses would begin to increase in difficulty and required work, and I was unsure if I would be capable of maintaining the grades I had come to expect of myself. I had chosen five required courses essentially randomly, only looking at how they would fit in my schedule. This led me to take the following courses:
BFIN 241 – Finance for Managers
BFIN 246 – Financial Accounting II
BADM 210 – Business Statistics
BCPT 123 – Business Computing Basics
PSYC 100 – Introduction to Psychology I
Finance for Managers was certainly not my favourite course and helped solidify my decision to continue in the direction I have planned. The numbers were no more complex than any of my other courses, but the content was more subjective and conceptual than I prefer. I did better than I was expecting in the class, receiving a better mark than the actual accounting course that I preferred, but it was more frustrating for me to work through. I had a lot of difficulty remembering specific layouts, which did not surprise me at all, but I also had some difficulty understanding some of the concepts for the calculations. Finance was a lot less straight forward calculation than accounting and I definitely noticed that through this course. The ratio calculations were simple for me, especially with the previous exposure I had to them. This was the fourth class I had looked at them in and they are straight-forward calculations. I had one horrible exam in this class (I had two exams on the same day and did not open a book for review until the night before, leaving me with approximately three hours of sleep that night – note to self, I do not function well without sleep), but I was able to study hard and make up the grades on the final exam and project, which can be seen in the BFIN 241 tab. Overall I was proud of my final mark in the course and am ready to leave finance in the past.
Financial Accounting II was an incredibly large jump from Financial Accounting I. Some of the topics trickled over, but the course seemed a lot more disjointed and all over the place than any previous one I had taken. The topics on each exam had nothing to do with each other, requiring memorization of many accounts with no flow between them. That memorization was the most difficult part of the course for me; I have never been strong at memorization and, in my experience, it is unnecessary in the way it is required. I worked at it, however, as it was needed for the course, but that certainly did nothing for my grade. This course also had an exam on the same day as my finance course above, so the second midterm mark was much lower than I am capable of. My lower than desired grade was mostly due to missed online assignments, lowering me from an A to a B. I will have to watch for these in the future and make sure I do not miss the deadlines.
Business Statistics was one of the easiest courses for me and I really enjoyed the class. The concepts made sense and, though I did find a couple of chapters that were harder for me to work through, I did better than I was aiming to in the course. My greatest struggle was with knowing which situations required which equations, but as I worked through more examples in class everything began to make sense. Many of my mistakes were made from missing small details, either when reading and interpreting or when taking down my notes during class. Overall this course was fun and easy for me, and I excitedly decided to do another course dabbling in statistics for these reasons.
I am sure I will be using my Business Computing Basics knowledge in the future and certainly do not regret deciding to take the course. Several of my friends had taken the course in their first year and told me it was simple, but I ultimately decided it would be a useful course after working in Excel during my internship. Sure enough, I was shown many functions that I had seen used in workbooks I was using but had never understood how they worked and what they were for. The content was relatively easy for me and I was quick to understand the layouts of the applications, which allowed me to focus on using the functions as opposed to finding the functions. We had many assignments to do in the class, which also allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the content, as can be seen in the BCPT 123 tab. I believe this course will serve me best for the future, especially considering the upcoming assignments in my classes.
Introduction to Psychology I was taken as a breadth elective and has left me to make a difficult decision. I initially decided to take psychology electives for all of the required breadth elective credits, but after this class I am not sure if I wish to continue. It was not exceptionally difficult beyond a lot of memorization, but I found that having to do lots of assignments and tests on the topic made me begin to dislike it. As with most things, I found the topic fascinating but the studying tedious, and I realized how glad I am that I decided against studying psychology in the Bachelor of Arts degree and instead decided to pursue business. I did not enjoy the research and searching required to write my thought paper, as seen in the PSYC 100 tab, nor did I find the composition of the human brain interesting. Only the last few chapters genuinely interested me and those are not looked into with a lot of depth. All things considered, I did well in the class but am not sure if I will continue to take these courses in the future.
An important note aside from all of my courses, I had an incredibly strong finals period in this semester and am hoping that success will continue to push me through the second semester. I stayed focused on my studies for the entire two weeks (likely aided by the trip I had planned for the day after my last final!) and raised nearly all of my grades above where I thought they would be to end the semester.