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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To ask if there are any icaew accountants here?

5 replies

SaraGee · 20/07/2019 12:11

Got my two advanced exams this week and everything is going wrong. Would really appreciate any advice anyone could give. At this stage it looks like retakes are definitely in order for both of them. I’m freaking out about what people will think re failure and how I will cope with managing all three (doing case as well) in November. Just at a very low ebb and struggling to see the wood for the trees and focus. Everyone else in my intake is very on top of the material and smashing through the mocks whereas I was consistently failing them (timing, exam technique and topic shakiness plus not really grasping what the examiner wants). I haven’t enjoyed my training contract and really want to get out hence the absolute need to qualify in November - but I am freaking out about failing these this week )almost certain) and not sure how best to spend the hours I have left. Finding the very competitive college atmosphere stifling rather than supportive and struggling to cope. Not writing this for sympathy but more practical steps that I can take

OP posts:
Logistria · 20/07/2019 12:32

I'm just going to address your panic about failing.

Are you in a big firm? What does your contract state re failing exams and retakes?

Unless your contract states it's grounds for dismissal then you need to stop panicking and breathe. Actually, even if it does say that panicking won't help. There are plenty of places that will still snap you up as long as you're good at the practical side.

Fails are not the end of the world. I've worked with fantastic people who failed some of the exams, and less fantastic people who sailed through theirs. And vice versa. First time passes are only one measure.

Some of my trainees at the moment are doing resits. It happens. What's important is working out what tripped you up and how you need to change your approach next time. And of course not letting the disappointment suck you into a black hole of despair.

Approached calmly and carefully, having reviewed where you went wrong and drawing up a plan to address it, resits need only add months not years to your remaining distance to qualification.

So, put down your panic about failing and focus on what's going on now. You haven't failed yet!

Do you have a mentor at work you can discuss this with?

We would always hope our trainees would talk to us if they were struggling like you are so that we can help them figure out what to do or provide a sounding board.

It's unfortunate you have such a competitive cohort, it's clearly not helping your stress levels or sense of perspective. Are you all from big firms?

Have a look at the actual pass rates for these exams and put it back in perspective.

SaraGee · 20/07/2019 12:42

Logistria - thank you, that is excellent advice. Thankfully no I won’t be fired for these. I failed a few at professional stage (then ended up resitting and passing) and it was a stressful experience. I would say that I’m very committed to the job and consistently work long hours to the detriment of study time (my last job involved daily 1am finishes and weekend work) when at this point I should have been doing college pre reading and focusing on the upcoming exams/starting early. It’s a big regret of mine and I feel like it makes me look incompetent and stupid when really I am neither of those things - at school/uni I was very academic and it’s a bit of a pride wounding thing to be failing these exams, although I can pinpoint the reasons.

I am from a big firm and will be speaking to my mentor as soon as I’m back in work to get some advice on balancing everything and how to tackle the next ones.

The exams start on Monday and I have been going from item to item in a mad panic without really absorbing anything. There are holes in my knowledge and I just don’t know how I can pass these. I don’t know how best to spend the next few hours without going crazy

OP posts:
Logistria · 20/07/2019 12:51

Few thoughts on practical things you could consider...

Focus on question practice. Any gaps in your knowledge will start to gradually embed if you keep repeating questions. Pick a topic area that's shaky, attempt one question as far as you can without referring to anything. Review against the answer and mark yourself harshly. Go back, repeat the question referring to notes when you get stuck and using them to help you complete it. Mark the answer. Repeat repeat repeat until you don't need to check your notes anymore. Move onto a new topic area. Repeat the same approach, then go back to the first one and do some more questions to keep it fresh.

Do not look at model answers before attempting questions. You'll sit there thinking "yeh, I knew that" when actually would you have written it? Probably not.

If your technique is at issue, tackle questions in terms of addressing that rather than content for a while.

So, timing, practise calculating exactly how many minutes you're going to spend per question part based on marks. Practise monitoring yourself. Practise forcing yourself to stop and move on. Practise leaving lots of white space (write on every other line). Make sure you answer every single question. If you write nothing you get no marks.

Practise dissecting questions without trying to answer them. Pull the question apart, label it up, annotate everything that comes to mind, jot down what you think it wants, pay attention to the different types of phrasing used to request different styles of answer. Practise reading slowly and not making assumptions about the question you think it's asking rather than what it's actually asking. Then compare your dissection to the marking scheme / model answer.

For case study, practise looking at the scenario in isolation and thinking up every possible idea, question, piece of advice, problem, etc etc that may be relevant or useful. Then after you've done that compare to what you're being asked - what did you miss that would be relevant to the question?

Remember not to over explain. Don't focus on minor extraneous points, or detailed explanations that are not helping your score. Bag the basics and move on. If you're being asked to write for a particular audience, put yourself in their shoes and think like them.

Keep breathing. Keeping a calm, cool head makes a huge difference to your ability to properly understand a question and formulate a coherent answer. Tell yourself "I can do this". If you feel yourself start to panic force yourself to slow down or stop, focus on your breathing and slowing it down, then resume.

Don't sit re reading and re writing your notes or texts. Practise questions, especially the questions you struggle with and master it that way. The only way to improve things like exam technique and timing are through practising and being prepared to change your usual approach if it isn't working for these exams.

Question question question question. But set yourself regular breaks to get up and have a drink or mental break.

Logistria · 20/07/2019 13:21

I should have said - pick and choose any of that that's helpful! If none of it is, don't use it.

But you might be surprised what two days of solid question practise targeted to the right areas can achieve.

TattiePants · 20/07/2019 14:12

Logistria has given you some excellent advice regarding question practice. It really is about exam practice, practice, practice. Given that you only have a couple of days left I would prioritise the topics into three areas; topics you know pretty well, topics you do not have a clue on and then everything else will be somewhere in the middle.

  1. Spend a couple of hours on the areas you know well and you might surprise yourself with how much you do know and that will give you confidence.
  1. Spend most of your time on the areas that you know something about but not enough. Briefly read through your notes then get practicing questions.
  1. Finally, there may be a couple of areas that you just can’t get your head round. For me it was ‘weighted average cost of capital.’ I couldn’t understand it, knew I could spend valuable hours of my revision time trying to learn it but it would be a waste of time. I took a gamble to spend my time focusing on other areas (that fortunately paid off).

Also, has your tutor suggested topics that they think will be in the exam or ones that come up in most exams? Focus on those.

You sound very much like me. I had to resit my finals as I spent too much time working (often till 1am), determined to do a good job and not nearly enough time studying. 20 years ago we had to sit 4 or 5 exams in one sitting and one fail meant resisting them all.

It’s not the end of the world if you don’t pass them (and in 20 years no one has cared that I did resits) but try to focus on doing the best you can next week and you may just surprise yourself. Good luck.

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