I looked at the clock, 12.37pm. I looked at the clock, 12.38pm. I looked at the clock 12.39pm. I looked at the clock, I looked at the clock, I kept fricking looking at the clock to find the right time. It finally came down to this single moment in my decades of study. It could change everything.

It could change nothing.

All I've worked for the past 3 and a half years, down to this minute, determined by 3 numbers I have yet to discover. All my plans for the next few months, few quarters, few years, depend on these few digits I am yet to be revealed. All of my youth, my studies and knowledge, packed into a few pixels displaying these numerical characters.

I couldn't suffer any longer.

I scrambled for Mozilla Firefox and rushed to save and close my work in Microsoft Excel. The cursor, shiveringly darting around the LCD screen closing off Photoshop, chat sessions, iTunes... anything to spoil the mood. Anything. I was perspiring in cold sweat, in fear, in nervewreck.

I typed in the ACCA Website. Logging into the ACCA student portal, with my 362 000 fellow student accountants jamming up the server along with me, it was the longest, longest 3 minute-wait in my last 6 months. The only 3 minutes that deserve such gruesome adrenaline pumping through my veins, the only 3 minutes that deserve millions of thoughts flooding through my cerebral cortex each second "what's the average this sem?" "how are the others doing? anyone failed anything?" "what am i gonna do if I fail 1 paper? Are all my plans gonna be jumbled up again?" "What are my friends and family gonna think of me if I fail?"


what if I fail all 3.


The coloured web page flipped to satin white. The HTML loaded from top the bottom, pixel line by pixel line, revealing my name, student number, date of exams, exam centre details.I could feel my vision moving at the speed of light through the entire frame, my heart pumping as if I were sprinting through the last 2 metres of a 100-meter dash.





I glanced at my first paper,
Corporate Reporting

















My heart stopped.






























After a few seconds staring at it, it finally hit me that after 6 months of sweating in the library, freezing in the refrigerating exam halls and going to college to study 7 days a week, averaging out 11 hours a day, for 4 weeks, I only increased my audit marks by 1.

And a few seconds after, yea, I failed audit.






I've learned a tonne of lessons along the way, after 7 semesters of study, 7 stressful exam periods, 7 results days. Of all those lessons, one thing's for sure, the most crucial one.



Don't give up.

Never look back, never feel down, and never be pessimistic. Even if the numbers burn in your mind,





Never give up.

That is the true lesson I've learnt from ACCA.
Not about numbers, not about memorizing.




It's about perseverance.

Labels: the accounting stuff