Threats to SunwayTES ACCA graduates?

I thought today would be a usual class but I didn't expect it to end with a depressing speech from Mr.Teo. In his speech, he highlighted a few potential threats to our future employment in the big four audit firms in Malaysia. The threats highlighted were as follows:

1. Placement of CFAB/ ICAEW interns in the big four audit firm

Apparently, most CFAB students in Sunway managed to secure an internship in audit firms during their studies and subsequently obtain a conditional employment letter upon the completion of their internships. This means that around 200 vacancies in such audit firms already been reserved in advance for those ICAEW students prior to their graduation and less vacancy will be available to ACCA students who wish to join audit firms after their graduation.

2. Collaboration of SunwayTES and University Malaya

In the upcoming 14th of May, SunwayTES, ACCA and UM will be signing a Memorandum of Agreement in such a way that UM accounting students can do their degree and ACCA concurrently. In short, they will have a university degree together with ACCA qualifications in 4 years' time. Hence, other ACCA students in Malaysia, especially private college students like me would be at a disadvantage since the graduates from UM would have their MIA membership immediately upon graduation. The big four audit firms will tend to favor such group of students in the foreseeable future. 

Ironically, Mr.Teo actually agreed to such arrangement and voluntarily sending SunwayTES lecturers to teach those UM students! Frankly speaking, any sane man would not agree to such arrangement that will jeopardize the future of his own students including me!!

3. Collaboration of SunwayTES and USM

Yes, you are not reading wrongly. Another dumb collaboration. Currently, SunwayTES actually collaborates with USM in offering ICAEW qualifications to USM students. Again, SunwayTES will be sending its lecturers to USM to teach those students. This will create an over supply of accounting graduates in Malaysia and the competition among graduates to enter those audit firms will be intensified.

4. TalentCorp Malaysia

In my opinion, this will be the biggest challenge for all Malaysian ACCA students. Recently, TalentCorp held an event in London with the aim of bringing in Malaysian graduates in foreign universities. There were around 2000 students who attended the event. If all of them decided to return to Malaysia to seek employment, local ACCA students will certainly be in a disadvantaged position. Of course, foreign degrees from University of London, Manchester, Nortingham etc are certainly better than my current qualifications.=(

However, disregarding the fourth threat, the other three threats seemed ridiculous to me. Those problems were in fact created by Mr.Teo himself and yet he was telling us to study hard to remain competitive. Obviously he was talking nonsense as all the three threats will not occur if he don't do anything in the first place! Worst still, he then forced those weaker students to defer their current papers in order to maintain the platinum status of SunwayTES. 

It was so frustrating to see such thing actually happens in college. The main purpose of a higher learning institution is supposed to nurture future generations with appropriate skills and imparting knowledge to students. It is certainly not to deny the liberty of a student to sit for exam. All the above spoilt my mood of the day and forced me to blog out all my frustrations. Oh, i think this is my first post in 2012 by the way. Ahh, maybe I should just enter a commercial firm to work rather than stressing myself to compete in an audit firm...

The last battle...

I realised I'm getting lazier to blog these days. I used to have at least one post per month and now I only blog once a few months. This laziness is partly attributable to my examinations in college. Things just getting harder and harder as I enter the last part of my ACCA qualification. I started to fail my papers despite studying consistently, it's quite disheartening sometimes.

After all the hardships I had been through for the past few weeks, I only get a miserable two-weeks break!! Anyway, I joined my friends for few days holiday trip as usual. This time we went to ipoh and penang to try out the local food and visited some places as well.

I can conclude those places in one sentence:
Ipoh is full of mad people and Penang people are mostly ill-mannered.

On the other hand, time passes so quickly to the extend that I can't believe that I'm in the last semester after my holidays!! I feel old suddenly and I can't help to think of the kind of job I'll be doing after I graduated. Phew, I hope I can pass all my examinations smoothly and get a decent job. I shall strike hard and win this last battle and win the war with ACCA, may the forces be with me until the end~

Groom myself =)

Today, I attended the grooming class for OBU but somehow it turned into a presentation workshop instead. I was quite disappointed initially since I was looking forward to those external trainers in teaching us how to dress professionally. However, everything seemed fine as the class went on. The experienced Public Relations Practitioner, Puan Zarina Zainal, spoke fluent English and conducted the class in a relaxing manner.

The workshop started of by an introduction from everyone of us followed by a drawing of our favourite cartoon characters. Then, she stimulated us to think fast by showing us some pictures and wanting us to give our opinion on the picture by relating those pictures with our real life experiences (although I didn't participate in it). After a moment, there was a power failure in the college! I wonder why the tariffs kept increasing yet the service is still so lousy...

Despite the blackout, we continued to carry out our activities in the college's foyer. We were split into groups and played charade. I kinda enjoyed it although my group didn't emerge as the winner. The purpose of the game was to highlight the difficulty of someone to understand our message if we don't speak to them. There might be different interpretations from one's action if the message is not clear to the audience.

After lunch, Pn Zarina went on to talk about first impression. Do you know that it only took 0.5 seconds for someone to create their first impression? Hmm.. I didn't know about it. She instructed everyone to paste a piece of paper behind our back and let us write our impression about our friends. And below is my result:

I also learned the differences between business gaze, social gaze and intimate gaze. In addition, Pn Zarina also taught us different body languages that we can/cannot use during a presentation. She even shared a hilarious video which showed the meaning of different body languages.

I'm quite tired right now, so I'll just skip to the last part.:P Finally, we had a brief presentation to put everything we learnt into practice. I chose to talk about vampire diaries although I ended my presentation quickly as I felt nervous. Surprisingly, I received good feedback from Pn Zarina after my presentation. It certainly made me feel happy for few hours.^^

Double killed

Apparently, I'm currently belonging to the third category. Soon after getting my results for my last semester's exam, I faced the greatest failure in my life. I failed not only one but two papers of my progress test!:( This is the first time in my study life to get such rubbish marks. The worst thing is that I don't even know what the heck was happening. Despite writing as much as I could, I barely got more than half of the marks allocated to each question.

It is quite disheartening since I had started my preparation for the progress test two weeks in advance. In addition, I read my notes twice before the test! Really don't know what more that I can do to get higher marks... It reminded me of something my tax lecturer told us during our CAT class. She told us that being hardworking will not guarantee a pass in ACCA professional papers. During that time, I was not convinced by her words. Who can't pass if he/she put in sufficient efforts to study, I wondered.

Haiz, but I had to admit that my lecturer was right after all. It seems that pure regurgitation of book knowledge does not work at all at professional level papers. Then how am I going to do well in such exam? My lecturer actually mentioned that we only have to bullshit all the way to pass all professional level papers.=.= Worse still, my lecturers want us to think like a consultant. How to think like one when I don't even know what a consultant do?

Many questions running wild in my mind but I don't even know which should I ask my lecturers first... Hopefully everything will be back to normal as soon as possible.

*Studying hard and learning how to bullshit well~*