I thought about that title an hour ago and I have had Midnight Oil in my head ever since.

Here is my draft for Steps 3-6 of assessment 1. My aim is to get step 6 done over the weekend. My 14 year old has his debut fight (boxing) Saturday night, so stayed tuned for Sunday nights blog for the result.

I hope all your drafts are coming along well, I look forward to providing and receiving feedback.

p.s. I just discovered that there is an emoji command. I was just saying to myself the other day that I need to be able to insert emoji’s on the computer so people don’t misinterpret my writing 😂. ummmmm, winning!

p.p.s. Please don’t tell me how long this has been around for. I’m an old 31.

Lisa.

In no particular order,

My top 3 blogs are……………

Being held to account

http://beingheldtoaccount.home.blog/

The Balance

https://primedfinance.wordpress.com/

Accounting with Georgia

https://acct11059withgeorgia.wordpress.com/

This was pretty simple for me to pick. Paul’s blog actually led me to Georgia’s which led me to Chris’s. I like that they all post regularly and I like their content. I only really follow a handful of blogs closely as it would be all too easy for me to spend 50 hours a week reading blogs, which probably won’t come in too handy at exam time.

Happy blogging.

Studiosity…………. yes I was avoiding you.

Yesterday I spent most of the day with my head in my economics textbook. It is such a content heavy subject. Any hours that haven’t been allocated to my other three subject go there. I completed my second quiz and managed 95% so I was in a good mood. Not like that time I got 99.5% on a math exam in 2015. Half a bloody mark. I’m pretty sure I’ll never forget it. So seeing as though I was in a good mood, I decided to stop beating around the bush with studiosity.

I really like to write. I think I have a pretty decent skill set when it comes to punctuation, grammar and spelling. I didn’t want to submit my work because I didn’t want anything less than a gold star from the writing experts. Apparently there are things I can work on. Whilst I knew my writing for this piece wouldn’t come up to scratch for formality, I thought everything else would be sweet. I would like to say I didn’t roll my eyes at the feedback but that would be a lie (I’m an only child, it took me a long time to learn how to lose graciously, ok). Once I read over my work again without a chip on my shoulder, I agreed with it all. Overall I was very impressed with the quality of the feedback, the turnaround time and the whole process in general really. I can see myself using this service a lot over the coming years.

Now that’s out of the way and the majority of my company financials have been imported into the spreadsheet, I can do some more blog reading to determine my favourite blogs. I have only really followed one blog closely so I am looking forward to getting to know some of my peers a little better. Maybe I will find someone who shares my lack of fondness for Peerwise. I’m rather neutral about it. I don’t hate it, but I don’t overly like it. I can imagine the gasps as the lovers read this.

Happy studying,

Lisa.

This is a link to my company’s latest annual report if anyone wants to compare it to theirs. It is very much so a marketing document by the seems of it.

http://www.port-tauranga.co.nz/investors/financial-information/download-annual-report/

I happen to really like my company, based on their annual report, which is clearly meant to make the shareholders all warm and fuzzy inside. This video about the company doesn’t strike the warm and fuzzy receptors unfortunately. There is clearly more to every story than just one video but it certainly raises a lot of questions.

5pm Friday came around and I was super pumped to find my company. Clearly I lead an exciting life based on that!. I was in the midst of the Friday afternoon sports fiasco where you have to be 3 places at once so I left it until Saturday morning to see which company I had.

I was going through the list and saw heaps of companies I thought would suit me. My eyes immediately went to Bega cheese. Must be my love of cheese. Nope, not my company, on I scroll. Upon finding my name and company, the words that came out of my mouth were, ‘ what the F*&k do they do’. I was given Port of Tauranga. A New Zealand based transport services company. I wouldn’t say I was disappointed, I mean I love NZ. My husband was born there and the majority of his side of the family live there. I must have assumed that this meant I should know something about my company, but the last time I checked I wasn’t researching ports the last time we visited the north island.

Fast forward a couple of days and some research into the company and its industry later I found out some pretty cool things. Maritime transport in NZ is obviously quite essential to their import and export markets. It moves around 49 million tonnes of imports and exports a year, generating close to 79 billion dollars annually. The cruise ship industry also contributes to the tourism industry in New Zealand and my company just so happens to be the largest port and international freight gateway in NZ. Way to go Port of Tauranga.

I think it was great that I had no idea what this company did initially as I read the annual report pretty in depth so I could grasp what my company was all about. Turns out they are a pretty big deal. Their stakeholder percentage is 54% Bay of Plenty Regional Council and 46% public. They are also the parent company to 6 other companies they have various share percentages in. The port facilitates container terminals, bulk cargo, wharves and bunkering. It has been able to accommodate much larger vessels since a dredging program was completed in 2016. I thought about the environmental impact of that and the emissions the whole operation in general would produce, but it turns out the company just hired its first environmental manager and aims to protect the environment in many ways. Obviously their annual report has done a good job of making me want to buy shares in their company!. There is also no pay equity disparity and last year the awarded 14 students scholarships from fields ranging from education to pharmacy. The also contribute to the Bay of Plenty community through donations and sponsorships.

Then the fun part. The Financials. My goodness…………………………..so many sub categories to look at. It was all relatively straight forward from the layout but I think I’m going to have fun with importing that data into the spreadsheet. Not sure if that’s sarcasm or not yet.

On another note, I have been a terrible blog friend, I think I have read one blog in the last week. I aim to read some more to get to know your companies as well. I hope you are all cruising through the assessment steps. Get it……………… Cruising!!!!!. Maybe I should cut back on the caffeine.

I’ll leave you all with a pic of the QE2, which just so happened to have an overnight stay at the Port of Tauranga last year.

Lisa.

This has been the question of the week. As I come to the end of the official first week of term I am surprised I haven’t actually had a breakdown yet. I’m sure that will come just before I have to sit my exams for 2 of my other subjects.

Turns out Peerwise isn’t my favourite thing. I really have no desire to log on, but once I’m on there and answering questions the time seems to just fly by. By the end of the term I may like it. Blogging however I really enjoy. It’s like a diary except the whole world can read it. I’m a pretty private person by nature but seem to have no issues pouring my thoughts out on this blog, go figure!

Scheduling my study has gone a little better than I anticipated. The sheer workload I have with the 4 units is really just a case of sink or swim. I am choosing to swim, but some of my economics course work is making sinking look appealing. Both of my boys have high level sporting commitments so everyday consists of some sort of training, competing, running around spending far too much money because they are growing too fast and need new everything etc so my afternoon hours which I thought I would be able to fit in have been replaced by very early morning study. I have always been a firm believer that those early hours are vital to success, we will see if it proves correct in my case. There is something special about being awake and learning before the sun comes up. I’m hoping the fact I get to start drinking coffee earlier means the novelty of it all doesn’t wear off.

So far I have done 2 graded quizzes, chosen a topic for a written assessment, the week 1 course work for my 4 units and submitted my assessment 1 – step 1. I didn’t post a draft for that. Still a little iffy on peoples judgements on my work. I’ll let that go soon seeing as though we have to publish drafts to have feedback provided by our peers for this unit. Oh and I got my company like the rest of you. Mine is a transport service company in NZ that I have never heard of. I read through the lists of companies and really wanted Bega cheese. No idea why but I’m happy to have the company I have. I think it will be fun to get to no a company I have no idea about and I am looking forward to researching it. All in all, the past week has been exhausting but rewarding at the same time.

So the answer to the question, can you teach an old dog new tricks? seems to be leaning towards a yes from me!

Until the next blog post, enjoy your studies.

Lisa.

I thought I would take the opportunity to introduce myself a little more, whilst I am procrastinating heavily. I am 31, with 2 children, both boys. My eldest turns 14 next week (can someone tell me where the time went?) and my youngest is 11. My husband is a sole trader with 2 employees, I handle the admin, bookwork and payroll side of things. Our boys are very sports oriented, so I am also a taxi service. As they are getting more and more independent and my husband and I talk about our goals for the future, the desire to do more with my life grows. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that I don’t miss out on anything when it comes to my children’s commitments, but I have always wanted to further my education, its just taken a bit longer than I anticipated to get here.

I have always been drawn to accounting. My high school accounting teacher told me to pursue it. I replied with, ‘that’s boring’. Here I am 15 years later doing it. I am pretty sure I wanted to be everything else under the sun before I settled on accounting. I am a qualified gym instructor, but I haven’t worked in a gym since my early 20’s. I went down the hospitality road, decided I wanted to be a teacher, changed my mind, decided to be a social worker, changed my mind, many other things……..changed my mind. I made the decision to do STEPS in 2015, after I decided to study medical science and major in pathology. I finally felt like I was headed in the right path, but my perfectionism lead to a nervous breakdown that had me bed ridden for close to 4 months. Anyone who struggles with mental health issues will know how debilitating it can be, even though it’s the last thing we would ever chose to go through. Needless to say I didn’t finish all my require courses and I kind of just shut uni out of my mind. Three years later I decided to have another go, this time I just knew I wanted to study accounting. I completed my last required STEPS course earlier this year and here I am. I am a distance student because of all our other commitments and once my four units for the first term went live, I looked over my workload and thought, what have I gotten myself into?

I know that fulltime uni, work, family, trying to have a life all at the same time is going to challenge me far beyond what I am used to. Although, I am an introvert, so the thought of using study as an excuse to have less of a social life actually appeals to me. At the end of the day, the time is going to pass anyway, so I may as well do something productive with it. I keep thinking of how great it is going to feel to go to the graduation ceremony and know that even though it got hard, I didn’t quit. The decision to get outside of my comfort zone may just prove to be the best decision I ever make.

Thanks for reading.

Lisa.

Hey fellow ACCT11059er’s and whom ever else stumbles across my blog. My name is Lisa, I’m a mother, wife and wannabe Accountant or Financial Planner or Property Valuer or……… you get the gist lol. I have always wanted to start a blog, but I could never decide on a topic, so here I am on the undergrad journey with you. Thanks for visiting my blog!