Mid Term Study update

Good morning my fellow Steemians, I thought today I'd give you an update on my studies. For those of you that are a bit behind the times, I've just recently started studying a Bachelor of Business with a Major in Financial Planning. I'm doing a fulltime study load while still working fulltime and raising the family. This is all through the Open Universities program, the course is hosted by Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, but each of the different subjects are through a variety of different universities such as Uni SA, Swinburne, Griffith etc.

So in this first study period, I'm tackling Accounting for Business (Uni SA) and Fundementals of Marketing (Swinburne Uni).

Accounting for Business

This is a very basic introduction to the accounting process. Thankfully I studied accounting in high school so a bit of muscles memory was able to kick in and I managed to pick it up fairly easily. But that same muscle memory also reminded me why I didn't pursue a career as an accountant.
The first 6 weeks have been building up to preparing a full suite of accounting reports such as Balance sheets and Income Statements etc. In the remaining 6 weeks, it appears that we are going through more of the management side with regards to analyising those reports and seeing how the business is running. This appears to be much more interesting to me.

We have weekly quizes on the previous weeks topic, these account for 10% of the total marks. I'm currently sitting on an average of 83% for these so I'm fairly happy with that.

Our first assignment was due about a week ago, I managed to turn this in about a week early. The assignment while fairly easy did present a slight problem for me, I couldn't get the Balance Sheet to balance out. I passed it to our accounts lady at work and even she couldn't get it to balance. She picked up that I made 1 mistake and even with that corrected it wouldn't balance.
In the end I re-did the entire question, and it turns out that we BOTH made a mistake on the same point, and once that was fixed the sheet balanced.
There was also a fairly heavy focus on Busines Communication, being able to present facts clearly and accurately in a professional manner.

Fundementals of Marketing

This subject seems like one of those subject that people do who want a bludge session. The content is lax, and assignments are a bit bland and the lectures are really short. There isn't even an exam at the end, its broken down into 3 multiple choice open book quizes through the course.

I didn't think I'd like this topic, and I kind of don't, but I do find it a bit interesting with regards to the psychology of selling and how marketers utilise that to appeal to a targeted buyer.

The major assignments, there are 3, but 2 of them are group assignments. The first part was handed in about a week ago and entailed us submitting minutes of our group meetings. The 2nd part is due in a few weeks and is providing a marketing brief on a fictional product. The 3rd part i haven't even read yet.
There is also a minor assignment, which involves takign screen shots of our activity in the course forums to prove that we have laid out an opinion and replied to other students.

All in all this subject is a waste of time, but I'm hoping to get a half decent mark to at least make up for it.

Moving forward, I have about 6 weeks left of this study period, then I roll straight into the next one. Next period I'm going to take on 3 units to try and smash this degree out quicker than recommended. I'll be taking on Business Law, Introduction to IT and Busines Data Analysis.

Thanks for reading, I'll post another update at the end of these units.