Financial Accounting & Reporting (FAR) is known as the beast in the CPA Exam world. It is 4 years of college accounting classes (plus information never learned in college) crammed into a four hour exam. It has the most amount of material covered in any of the four parts of the exam.
It was the first section I finally passed. I will never forget the day I received my passing score the mail. It was a great day. But 18 months later, I still had not passed all four sections of the exam, so I lost FAR. I cried and cried and cried. I think I was more upset that I lost FAR then the fact that I didn't pass the last part I was trying for. All I could think about was the amount of material I had to reteach myself. Not only was it all the information from before, but if you know anything about accounting, you know that accounting rules change and more aspects are added to the accounting world and the exam all the time. So I had to teach myself all about international accounting. What the F^&K? I don't work on any international accounts. I work at a mid-sized accounting firm. Yes, I know that doesn't mean I will never need IFRS but 99.9% sure I won't need it while working here. While I like where I work, I am still young and it doesn't mean that I will never change jobs where I could possibly need this information. Beyond maybe needing IFRS in my job, I KNOW I will need those three distinct letters after my name to advance my career no matter where I am working. So I plugged along and learned as much as I needed to know for the exam.
Since day 1 I have been praying and studying HARD at every free second that I came across to pass this exam. I will explain in a later post, but this month (blackout/score release month) has not been a happy one for me. So I prayed more and more for good news during score release week. Some of my twitter friends posted they had received their FAR score before the official announcement from NASBA. I scrambled to find my NTS to check my score. Typing those numbers in and hitting "score" button, I held my breath and closed my eyes. Only to open my eyes and see no score was up yet. Ok breathe. A few hours later the site wasn't working right. I guess it was all the people checking for their scores. But I still closed my eyes and held my breath only to open my eyes with no score or an error processing my request.
I finally stopped for the night and kept plugging away at REG for the night. I was already involved in it. My thought process was even if I need to retake FAR, I am already into REG. Let me keep going. I woke up the following morning, sick to my stomach thinking about checking my score again because this time I knew it would be available. Here I go again. Type in numbers, hit "score," close eyes, hold breath, open eyes....
Breath let out as a smile came across my face. I am very happy! I slayed the beast twice! All my hard work paid off. But I didn't let my happiness stay too long. I went right back to studying for REG for the day. I know how to pass. So there is no reason I won't pass REG this window!
Hang in there, that's awesome. Best of luck on studying for REG- not that luck has anything to do with it. You will be fine! I remember when I was going through the process, most people just don't realize how much it takes out of you keeping up the study program. All the best to you.
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