Nerds Have to Eat Too

The past 7 days have certainly been a week of extreme business geeky-ness. In my financial accounting class, we have been assigned a semester long accounting cycle project to complete. It’s fairly in depth and allows you to be the bookkeeper of a small business that rents and sells bicycles. You have a million documents, invoices, bills, checks, credit memos, deposit slips, etc, to deal with, and you have to journalize, record, and post them all in the correct chronological order. Megan and I decided to partner up for this project, and so far we’ve been kicking its butt. Aside for the hour or so of class time we get to work on the project during the week, we have now met twice outside of class to work on it. This is unnecessary, and we fancy ourselves true academic overachievers because of it. You know you’re in the right major when calculations and tiny row of numbers that correspond to paperwork gets your heart rate going.

But wait. There’s more. The MSU Accounting Club had its first meeting of the year last Wednesday. Please note that I skipped the first hour of an excellent dinner party to attend this event. The meeting was actually pretty great and relevant. The club put together a panel of accounting seniors, grad students, and employed graduates. They talked about their academic experiences, the application process for both internships and jobs, taking the CPA exam, failing the CPA exam, and how it is possible to hate audit in the classroom with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, and then end up doing it in the real world and loving it a million red M&M’s. (If you missed either of those references, please watch 10 Things I Hate About You and What a Girl Wants, respectively.)

In more relatable news, I went out to breakfast with some girlfriends this morning at the Cat Eye Café. Their signature item is banana bread French toast. If this sounds good to you, you will find out that it is indeed BETTER. It’s like having cake for breakfast; it is to die for. Order the Cowgirl for a piece of banana bread French toast, potatoes, and bacon for $7.95 and you can’t go wrong. If you wear your cat eye glasses you get 50 cents off your meal, and if you where a cowboy hat, they take off another 50 cents.

Back to Business

For me, this semester will be business as usual. Literally. Now that I’ve completed all of my MSU CORE requirements, my major will consume my academic endeavors full-time.  As an accounting major, my day consists of financial accounting, business and economics statistics, managerial accounting and business communications. I am also taking psychology. I have decided that a psychology minor is a good way to feed my inner nerd, while still pursuing a concentration that is relevant to my field. I thought it might end up being a dry/boring semester, but so far it’s actually pretty fun. I finally have someone I enjoy in both my accounting classes (thanks Megan McGlone!), and all my classes are back to back Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so my day goes by pretty quickly. With Tuesday and Thursday totally free, I have time to log hours as Outside Bozeman’s financial intern. I’m pretty excited to dive in to some real life application. I don’t think that MSU offers a good course that teaches student to use Quickbooks (which is the accounting system that pretty much every business uses), so I’m feeling lucky to be getting that experience as an underclassman.

Other news: When my roommate Emery was home over break, she went to her dentist who told her that her wisdom teeth were not anywhere ready to come out and that he would monitor them over the next couple of years. When she came back to Bozeman, her jaw hurt which she thought was because she had been clenching her jaw in her sleep. Non-medical visual recon aka looking in her mouth, confirmed that her wisdom teeth had indeed began to come in and were clearly visible through the gums. Awesome. So this last Thursday, Emery went in to have them removed. The procedure was quick, but now she is looking her much like a chipmunk and can’t eat real food or brush her teeth for at least a week. She is currently icing her jaw on both sides with bags of frozen peas!

Back in Bozeman

Spring Semester

Although Winter Break was relaxing and chock-full of fun and quality time spent with family and friends all over the west coast, I really am excited to be back in Bozeman. The first couple of weeks of the semester are some of the best opportunities to enjoy the outdoors; the school work is light and the three day MLK weekend gives ample time to go somewhere maybe not-so-close to town. Although the skiing conditions here in Bozeman may be way below average (although don’t fret, it is currently snowing), the cross country skiing conditions down in Yellowstone National Park are great. My roommate Emery and I decided to rent some skis and take advantage of this triple word score of a weekend and head down to the Park.

Best Deal Ever: A pair of XC skis, boots and poles costs you $6 at the MSU Outdoor Rec Center. If you have any interest at all and don’t own skis, this is the place for you. Check out a full list of rental equipment here.

I’m a skiing noob, but enjoyed myself immensely. I fell over a few times; I did not get a hold of slowing myself down going downhill during that first hour. Although I’m glad I could provide Emery with some slapstick winter comedy. Aside from the awesomeness of doing something new was the fact that the ridge above us was covered with a herd of buffalo that more or less moved up the valley the same way that we did. We also encountered some big horned sheep, elk, deer, and a bald eagle on the drive to and from the Park.

To top it all off, the day ended with a resounding New England Patriots win over the Denver Broncos, including Costco pizza and rhubarb raspberry crisp. As a Seattle Seahawks fan, I held no real stake in the game, and gladly rooted for the Patriots in order to mix up the Tebow-mania that seems to reside in the Rocky Mountain region. (And who can resist that chiseled Brady jaw line?) All in all it was a great start to the weekend, not to mention Daniel Radcliffe hosted Saturday Night Live last night. Please take an hour and enjoy it.