One of my courses this semester is a senior capstone. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of a capstone, you can quickly understand it by knowing that, when I tell people I'm taking my capstone, those who have already done theirs say, "Oh, no! I'm so sorry."
For the capstone in the school of business, you are required to compete in an advanced computer simulation of running a large corporation that manufactures electronic sensors. You are scored on various elements of the success of your business, from total sales, to customer satisfaction, to employee retention, to stock price, and everything in between. Whoever is the best in the class gets an A, and everyone else is graded on what percentage of that person's success they achieved.
No pressure.
The first part of the simulation, which is 25% of my grade, comes from working with a team. Much to my initial delight, everyone on my team except for me is an accounting major. In my mind, this was going to make the project much easier.
Sadly, this has not been the case. Not only are they not as obsessively-nerdily-overly prepared as I would have hoped, it turns out that I had a poor grasp of what accountants do. They know nothing about forecasting or finance.
"What?" you might ask. "Accounting is the same thing as finance!"
Unfortunately, it is not. As I talked through our financials with the team and evaluated our proformas from the first "year" of business, one team member asked, "how do you know this?"
The reply I wanted to give? "How do you NOT?"
But with no alternatives, as the course is required for graduation, I press on.
I was discussing this all with my dear sister, LL, who will be visiting our great state in 74 days...not that anyone is counting... I explained the situation, and she actually already knew that accountants didn't know anything about finance. I told her that I was so frustrated because I had no idea what accountants actually do.
Her perfect summation: "They can add. With calculators."
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