STUDY HABITS FOR ACCOUNTING MAJORS

I just graduated with my degree in accounting and I'm actually also getting my master's of accounting next year and studying for the CPA exams. So I thought I'd come on here and talk about studying and study habits. If you're an accounting major, you probably know it's hard. Or if you're not in it yet, you've probably heard accounting is not an easy major by any means. For first couple of classes, you usually aren't too bad, but as soon as you get into intermediate two, cost accounting and so on, the level really jumps up a lot and your study habits are going to make or break you. Number one, you can't cram study in accounting. Everybody's brain is different. Your study habits are going to be different and the best study habits for you is going to be the one that works for you. So this is just coming from me. But for me, I'm not a cram studyer. I honestly have a hard time sitting and studying for more than two hours at a time. Once I hit that two-hour mark, I have to get up and move physically move to a different location or outside. It's crazy. So what does work though is learning the material as you go. I honestly found that if I didn't learn the material as the semester went by, come the test, I wasn't going to test. As you go, don't yourself skip class today, learn the material this weekend because you won't probably. Let's be real. Number two would be when you are studying, study things that force you to use your brain and apply the material. Reading the textbook, I don't think I learned much anything from my accounting textbooks. Obviously, I learned it there, but the only way that that actually stuck was from doing lots and lots of practice problems. Whether that was going back and doing the homework again or doing quizzes or being in McGrath hill, doing the study questions, do anything that you can actually to apply the knowledge and then get an answer. And if I didn't get it, seeing where I messed up and using that as my blueprint for where I needed to study. Was the biggest thing. Just sitting down and reading for two hours was not going to give me anything. But sitting down and doing a problem, messing up, finding where I messed up and understanding why was leaps and bounds, much better. And then lastly, I would say just spending time every day in my classes and my homework, I definitely was the type to let an assignment was due and then I was in McGrath hill for seven hours trying to get it done. And if I had just broken it up a little bit every day, it would have saved me so much stress and mental work. I hope that was helpful. And if you have any accounting related questions, please let me know.