Steven P: 6 Signs You’re on Track to Pass the CPA Exam

Based on what I’ve experienced before I passed FAR and REG, here are 6 signs that I believe demonstrate that one is on the right track to passing an upcoming exam.

1. Sign number one: You may find yourself panicking a little after putting in some serious work. You’ve done all the work and you wake up one day half way through a planned review time and you try to answer a question but it all looks like a foreign language. You panic scrambling for your books, opening to random pages like a mad person trying to figure out what happened to all the knowledge you stored in your brain. This is called fish in the water syndrome. You’ve been submerged in the material for so long its like you breath it now but cant see it. These are the points where Id push it just a little more in terms of work and then suddenly take a nice, long, relaxing break. This is where a scheduled day off comes in handy too. When you resume, you will feel like you are in water again, trust me. Only this time you will be renewed and ready for the swim.

2. You can recite your review courses mnemonics by heart and you never bothered to spend serious, extra time to memorize them. You really have to be around the material for a long time to memorize long lists without actually trying too hard. Give yourself a pat on the back!

3. You spend extra time exercising to finish listening to your review courses on the mobile app.  After a while, its even your honest excuse not to go back home or to run a couple extra miles.

4. You understand that the purchases account is a nefarious financial statement account which, depending on the situation or textbook, is classified as an asset or an expense or both and used as both in different calculations either way.  In other words you start to meander through the minutia and gray area of accounting and become excited about your discoveries. Welcome to the labyrinthine.

5. You can talk about what youre learning while you visualize what you learned and feel somewhat like Neo from the matrix when journal entries scan through your mind’s eye like complex arrays of data.

6. You use all sources available to you with ease and pizzazz. That tablet has found a home in your bag which is always on your shoulder and you use it like Ender Wiggins on a spaceship terminal during a crusade to save humanity from giant insects about to invade earth when you open up your study app and do 10 quick questions in every place, and for every section, might I add, with WiFi.  

Well, that’s all for this blog post. I hope you’ve found some of it useful, some of it entertaining and lighthearted, and hope the day brings you all cause to celebrate.

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