Sydney, 17 March 2017
This semester I have promised to my self to be a brand new student life for me. I have made a very serious mistake last semester by underestimating my study. I was thinking it would be easy for me since I have two undergraduate degrees both involving accounting and I have nine years working experience in accounting related field. The fact is not! Accounting degree in Australia involves a lot of concepts and theory than the calculation. I would say, my Indonesian university gave me the most complicated accounting calculation problem, but Australian university gives me the most demanding open ended or essay questions. My teacher here said, everyone can do accounting calculation, which is only recording to debit and credit sides. But, she said, can you solve an accounting problem which involves your reasoning and judgments? She continued, that skill is more likely you gonna need later in real life.
However, answering an open ended question in Australia is very different with what I did in Indonesia. Open ended question in Indonesia is mostly about memorising the text in the book. Answering format for the question is also very loose, where I can just directly answer the core of the question. The answer is sometimes can be anything, depends on the student's perspective, thus there is no exact correct answer. Here, the examiner makes his judgment.
While in Australia, in answering an open ended question, the students cannot just directly answer to the core of the question. The students must answer in introductory-body-conclusion format. The students must know what to write for each part, otherwise they will lose mark. The students here need to build their arguments in both affirmative and negative sides. Australian education system is just crazy about the critical thinking things. As a person with Asian education background, I am not used to have a critical thinking. We just follow the pattern and practically what we do is just memosising and repetition. You know, questioning the rules is very taboo in Asian culture.
Answering an open ended question in Australia is even more demanding since they have a very strict marking guide. They set a fixed marking guide and they will match point-per-point of the students' answer with the marking guide. It is very rigid that there is no room for students to improvise their answer nor to have different point of view in responding to the question. So, the most difficult part in answering this question is knowing what actually the teacher wants for the answer.
I remember my first accounting exam in here, I got 44.5 out of 46 for the calculation and multiple choices questions, but they just gave me 3 out of 14 for the open ended questions. furthermore, I did very very bad in two other qualitative subjects. I need one semester to build my writing skills in answering essay question. If only did I not underestimate my study, I am sure I could get at least one grade higher for all my subjects. Thus from now on, I have promised to myself to start a brand new student life this semester.
That's what I do now. I spread all my subjects from Monday to Friday, so I have one subject each day on my timetable. In this way, I hope I can concentrate to study every day and night for each subject. I think I make a correct decision, since this semester all the subjects require a lot, like a lot, of reading. The accounting subject for this semester is not an exception. I just didn't expect that intermediate accounting is so difficult. It used to be very easy for me when I studied it in my undergraduate degrees. But this time, I think intermediate accounting in here feels like accounting theory, since it involves a lot, like a lot, of reading related to the concepts and theories. I am dying.
