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“I teach financial accounting and reporting. It involves how to analyze a transaction, what’s the impact to a company’s books, and how to take all the transactions and compile them to get a financial statement. These lessons can benefit students who want to be shareholders one day, who want to work on Wall Street, who want to become entrepreneurs, and those who don’t work in finance but want to be able to manage their money.”
“I was always good at math in school. I thought about becoming an accountant or systems analyst. I don’t think they really educated women about what else you could do with math back then. The systems analyst path was new, and I had this impression that you’d be buried in the basement working on computers and would never see the light of day. Plus, I’m very detail oriented and love getting into the nitty gritty.”
“I’ve been known to sing horribly and do the moonwalk in class. There’s something called a bad debt expense, so I’ll sing ‘Bad to the Bone,’ or Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’ and change the words to reflect the lesson. I’m also known to be the prop lady. When I’m doing a lecture on inventory, for example, I’ll bring in Hershey chocolate bars to show how a store does inventory. Do you put the oldest stock out to get rid of it before it expires? But what if it has special packaging—do you need to put it out front?”
“My CPA certificate reminds me of how important perseverance is. The first time I took the CPA exam, I flunked all four parts of it. I was just devastated. I thought ‘I’m not going to bother.’ My parents told me that I couldn’t give up so quickly. So I studied more, and when I took the exam again, I passed all four parts. I think it’s important for students to understand that sometimes you’re going to face failure. Maybe you change your path, maybe you recognize your weaknesses better, but you try again. My CPA certificate also represents a code of ethics. I once had a corporate job where some of the behaviors were heading into an area that made me uncomfortable; I was asked to do accounting that I didn’t think was proper. The belief system that certificate represents is important to me and helps guide my way.”
