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The overhead cost of ACCA

Posted by Unknown | Posted in | Posted on Tuesday, February 01, 2011



ACCA is the plague of the modern education. Everytime i think about it i wanna smash my head on the wall. The mention of the word alone makes me sick and triggers all the wrong emotions. Now the question is why? Why do i hate it to such extremeties? The answer is quite complicated. 


ACCA has changed my life; inverted it forever. Life was not exactly a piece of cake prior to it but i never carried this sense of failure either. If u are or ever were an ACCA student you'd know what exactly am i talking about. Every time you fail a paper you fail time, money, friends, parents and most importantly you fail YOURSELF. You lose your value in your own eyes. You start looking down on yourself. The pride takes a fall. Self-esteem goes down the gutter. Self-respect lower than a whore. 


The first time u fail is the most shocking, but the state of despair doesnt last long, and before it takes over, you quickly resolve. Determination & commitment come into play. You try your ass off to achieve what you couldn't in the first run. And if you don't succeed this time either then bammm!, you enter a phase. All of a sudden, you are the world's biggest loser. And to make it even worse you start facing pressure from all around you. And now you have to come out with flying colors for a whole host of reasons other than the primary ones. You don't have classmates to pat you on the back and say "Don't worry pal, we'll get through this".  No sir, no! You are a fucking professional and what you do is totally your own business. Teachers don't give a shit either. You bounce batches so often that as soon as you start getting all familiar and settled, the term is over and in the next go round you are in a whole new territory. With us 'Saudi boys' not only do we jump batches, we jump cities and even countries. All in all being a class, a unit is something an ACCA candidate can only dream about. No sense of belonging whatsoever. You are a lone wolf claimed by no institute and no system. I am ready to get admitted in a mental hospital, if it means abiding by a routine and being part of a group! Take me in you psychotic bastards, hug me and call me crazy!.....Pardon me, I got carried away, but that is just how desperate i am. No embellishments, no rhymes, thats the plain simple truth ladies and gentlemen.


But nevertheless, regardless of how often you fail to break-even, you keep moving. If you are somewhere along the first part, you consider a change of career. But if you are hanging in part 2, then its too late, you are already deep into the game. Its either ACCA or nothing at all. And trust me part 2 is fucking cursed. It has the power to suck you and hold you to it. There comes a time during part 2 when you are going in circles. Doing the same shit over and over again. Stuck in a recurring phase, where time catches speed and progress comes to a halt, what i like to call 'quicksand'. The more furiously you try to kick your way out, the deeper it sucks you. That is some brutal era, even proven life-threatening for a few unlucky bastards. But the good news is that theres a way out. The damnation isnt eternal. You aren't doomed yet. Coz it can fuck with you all it wants but it just cant fucking kill you, can it! 


No matter how long you were caught in the loop, for some its one semester, others as long as 3 to 4 years, If you are persistent enough you manage to escape. You break free and forward you go. You keep moving steadily and then finally one day you've done it. You look back in time and feel proud about how you struggled through all the bullshit. But life isn't a fucking Disney production is it. No happy ending. The job is another story. But it pays out. Be a badass accountant and you just might earn your payback off the paychecks..


Even if you aren't an ACCA student i am sure some of the bullshit sounded familiar. A few things are commom to most lines of academic. Studies are pathetic afterall. Its not outright hatred that i feel, knowledge is good and even interest worthy. I have other reasons. For one, we are over-taught, deemed to learn more than whats necessary. And its one thing in theory and another in practice. But thats just me. 


For those of you awaiting ACCA examination results, best of luck (not that it matters). Hope this served as pep talk, so dont kill yourself over some test scores. Life is more than just numbers. Man invented number to make life easier not to count the number of times life fucks him over. 


Share about what you feel is the worst thing about ACCA or whatever field it is you are in, in the comments below.