Day 1 and 2 of Capstone 1 are finally over!
I have a pretty good group!!! They're all hella smart. Which is great.
We had a presentation to do in the morning. Which I practiced at home in front of my dad's skeleton. Shout out to Charlie the Skeleton, I know you're reading this blog... NOT.
And yeah, apparently, I was able to present fairly well! That whole how-to-present last post I did really helped me. One thing that sucked was the audience of candidates had to ask questions: and one person asked a question related to my part of the presentation. OH MAN. I was caught off guard. But I gave a legitimate answer. The only problem was my delivery of that answer. I sounded like this:
"I guess blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah so I guess that would solve the problem."
I could have followed up with "Does that answer your question?" and if not, I could ask my other group members to help out.
I was actually shocked! This was the first time I had to give a speech in a long time. One thing I kept telling me to calm my jumping heart was NORMAL, NORMAL, NORMAL, THIS IS NORMAL. As in, this is a normal situation. And then when it was my time to talk, I just talked as I had planned, and although my voice was shook at sometimes, I thought I was able to talk clearly and articulately. So it was all-in-all good.
That is not to say that I'm underestimating this capstone 1 at all because I've read all too often that people have failed Day 1 of the CFE before.
Anyways, some other things I noticed about other presenters were WOW. Some presenters were clearly on top of their game, the level of knowledge they displayed was GREAT! And the level of realism they added to their speech was great too! They would ROLEPLAY their role and then go through the presentation.
Some bad presenters were 1) really crap voice 2) English was not their first language - Not a huge problem, but obviously it will help a lot if your English is fluent 3) they didn't dress nicely
One thing I noticed is that no one walked around. A lot of people were fidgety with their hands. One guy was able to use his hands really well. For example he would talk about something like removal and then he was separate his hands. So if you're going to use your hands, then at least do something that makes sense! Another thing was BE KNOWLEDGEABLE. These knowledgeable folk were able to answer really tough questions. They had a clear idea of the scenario, and when asked the tough questions, they would provide a response that at the very least made sense to them. Which comes off as CONFIDENT. And when you're CONFIDENT, people tend to believe you. This is more of a psychological thing. Anyyyyyways.
Another thing that caught me off guard was the work I had to do before class.
Jeeeeeez. I found out literally hours before Day 1 was about to begin that we had to hand in 2 assignments before attending Day 1.
So I took a look at both, worked on the easiest one first, handed it in to dropbox, BECAUSE YOU GOTTA HAND IN SOMETHING! and then went to class. Fortunately Day 1 was related to the case I worked on, so I wasn't completely lost. And then I had time after Day 1 class was over to go home and read the entire 2nd case (35 pages long or so = yuck!) and then I looked at some other relevant material. And man, that helped A LOT! Because when my group was talking about the case, I knew exactly what was going on. Or at least majority of information. I was able to even provide input!
Bring a lunch just in case they don't feed you at the Capstone 1 location. They didn't for me! And making a lunch can be time consuming. Unless you manage your time wisely and know (from reading my blog) they're not going to feed you at the location hahaha.
One thing I noticed was this one Asian guy. He was like "I'm so tired..." Everyone's like why? He was like "I did an entire multi during lunch" a multi is some sort of exam (there's two types, I believe a multi is the longer one). So basically the competition is definitely fierce, so candidates you better be in it to win it! Because you're up against fierce competition. I already know, I'm relatively fierce. But I need to be even fiercer!!! RAWWWWR!~ haha.
Then again the knowledge you already know will be of great help.
So I'm still deciding whether I want to do the Tax elective for Capstone 2 or Assurance elective.
I think I have to do assurance, because I remember filling something out that said I will be focusing on assurance for the CFE. But if I can change that at this point, I just might! One reason I'm even posing this question to myself is that I've heard having a STRATEGY really helps you pass the CFE. And what's a good strategy? Picking an easy topic. The only drawback is: if you want to do public accounting you have to choose assurance as your focus. So, it has to be worth it... I'm going to print out some sample CFE stuff for assurance and tax and see whether tax is significantly easier. OH, they will not let you have a performance management focus, or finance focus on the CFE if you didn't take it as an elective. Which should be obvious... Anyways! I chose assurance and tax. So I'm gonna choose soon! I'll let you guys know! I've printed out a sample CFE posted by CPA and now I'm going to compare the assurance and tax solutions. I'll let you know what I think.
At first glance: assurance = 30 something pages, tax = 20 something pages
Let's get to it!
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