class
Today, thursday the 8th,?is our last day of classes at Euromed. Many of the students have elected to do a take-home final while others, including myself, decided to come to classes tomorrow morning for an in-class final. The finals are different and I'm hoping that the in-class final is the easier of the two, my fingers are crossed. The final is from 8am until 10am and after that we (or better yet, I) am done!!! The only thing I have left to complete for my degree is our business project, that will take sometime.
Today we had our normal classes. We all had to sit through yet another class on international branding and another class on Strategic performance measurement. I actually enjoy the performance measurement class even though it is taught by Rodney Rogers (kidding, Rodney.. please pass me.. please). After class the school had a small ceremony for us to congratulate on our studies at Euromed. We all received letters of achievement and best of all, the fed us ;).
After classes We headed back to the apartment and started the cleanup process. The three of us had to search the houses looking for our clothes, quickly wash as many clothes as possible and attempt to fit it all back in our backpacks. It was quite fun.
Finals are tomorrowFirst I need to answer Oleg's question. Ya man I'm cool. School is keeping us all busy, we actually do have quite a bit and when you combine it with our ongoing business project we've been doing homework most every night. We have, however, been able to get to the beach to do some homework and also some cliff diving. It's been nice. So just think about this, while you are sitting in your office cubicle doing some number crunching we are working on our homework while watching the sunset over the mediterrean with a bunch of bikini-clad french women around us. So how's Portland ;)
Now about the website. For those of you that are frequent visitors you'll notice that I have made a few changes. First I changed the gallery around a bit. The changes were made to make it easier for me to do things remotely. Secondly I added a new gallery. This gallery is open for all PSU Euromed students to upload their pictures to, so hopefully you'll get an opportunity to see what the other students have been doing. In all honesty, every other student has had much more time than Jenson, Amanda and I have had. We used our time to work on our business project.
Other than those changes the website is the same; boring as ever.
So now the question on all of your minds, What did I do today?
Today our class took a trip to Puyricard?Chocolaterie. Puyricard is a chocolate/confectionary company that produces all of its products by hand and sells them in their own shops. Think of Godiva and then multiply the quality by 50.?Most of their products are made so fresh that they have to be eaten within 3 weeks after production but a few of their products last longer. After we toured the factory they took us back to the boutique and gave us all the chocolate that we could eat. I though I died and went to heaven.
I took full advantage of the free chocolate and dug right in. The first piece I picked up was wrapped in pink foil and I unwrapped it as fast as I could and shoved the entire thing in my mouth. That's when I realized that what I had picked up was a raspberry liquor candy and that I had just essentially taken a shot of whiskey (Although I'm not really sure what type of liquor it was, I just know that it was really strong). I make very interesting faces when I am expecting chocolate and I get a shot of liquor. My next piece of candy was not foil wrapped and I asked what it was before I shoved it in my mouth.
After the chocolate factory the bus dropped us off in AIX-EN-Provence a small town near Marseille. Other than neat buildings and shopping it wasn't anything exciting. I did, however, take quite a number of good pictures. I'll post them up tomorrow after class. So check back here tomorrow around 6pm my time (do the conversion for your own time zone).
That's all I have for now. I will post again tomorrow and maybe on Friday. On friday at 1am, however, I board a train destined for Barcelona,Spain and then I'm off to Salamanca, Spain. Once I find an Internet Cafe in Spain I'll post.
Last Monday we started a two day course entitled "Legal Highlights of Business in Europe". It was taught by Pr. David Sprecher a lawyer from Israel. He explained to us that we were going to cover a good chunk of the material that he normally covers in a 30 hour, 3 week course. Oh Goody.
The classe began at 9am monday morning and we adjourned at 4:30pm the same day. We were granted two fifteen-twenty minute break plus one hour for lunch. The remainder of the time was him sitting in a chair lecturing us on how to find governmental funding in Europe and on other legal issue. The content was very interesting but it was incredibly crammed into a very tight class session. He explained to us that on Monday we were receiving a lecture but on tuesday we were going to be given a test, a 2-hour long test.
His manner of teaching was completely the opposite of what you would find in the States. He must very blunt, rude and told you exactly what he was feeling. Although many students (well, ok everyone except me) hated him, I found him refreshing and I learned a lot. Periodically he would ask a question of the class and if a student's answer was completely off the wall, off topic or just completely wrong he would tell you that you were wrong very bluntly. He also made it very very clear that everyone had to speak in the course to receive 30$ of the grade, when one student did not speak during the class he approached the student after class and said "Too bad for you that you didn't speak in class".
While some might find this harsh I found it an excellent teaching method. The next day that student did speak in class. Although I don't think that all teachers should be as rude, arrogant and mean as this teacher periodically its good to be pushed down and belittled by a teacher. Oh and by the way he hated several of my answers and loved a few of the others.
The test on tuesday was quite interesting. We were given very little information about our task only that we would work in 4 teams of 5 in a 1 on 1 negotiation. One of the teams would be a Belgian company and the other a Czech company. The size of the company, product, purpose, etc. would not be told to us until just before the test started. It was our job to pick a country of incorporation, a country of manufacture, state where funding will come from (which grants or private sources) add the legal issues for choosing each country. Most of us didn't leave Campus that night until at least 8:30pm or 9pm(computer labs closed at 9pm).
So far that has been our most intense class but the other classes are starting to pile on the homework.
It has been a while since we last spoke, how are you doing? I'm doing fine, school is keeping me pretty busy as usual, I have a list of callbacks that seems to be growing by the minute and my email inbox is full of people I haven't responded to. If you are one of those people, I apologize. Please understand how busy I am, way too much homework and Sundays are my only day of rest. I hope you understand it when I say that I'd rather be surfing on Sunday rather than sitting in front of my computer responding to a million emails. Surfing allows me to relax and I personally believe that it is something I need, one day of rest out of a hectic week.
Hmm, what have I been up to you, you ask. One Word, school. This term I am only working with the Surf Club, I have backed away from Beta Alpha Psi, the snowboard club (season's over), student politics, campus rec center and a plethora of other groups that I was involved in. I need the time to focus on my studies. Fortunately my lack of time hasn't hurt my G.P.A rather it has hurt the amount of sleep I get every night. This term has been pretty good so far. I am taking three classes; Financial Statement Analysis, Managment strategy and I started my business project. My busines project is quite fun. Fortune smiled upon our group and we were able to work with a great company on a very interesting project. Unfortunately we are all under a N.D.A so I can't tell you anything about it except that I am learning a LOT.
Summer Plans,
Oh summer plans, summer plans. My have those changed. Originally I was heading to France for a month and then I was going to trip around Europe for another month. Nope, that ain't going to happen anymore. I am still going to France for a month to finish my studies but afterwards Jenson and I have decided to head west to Spain instead of tripping around Europe. I am going to spend one month in the town of Salamanca, Spain at a language school there. Each morning for four hours, five days out of the week I am going to be attending spanish courses. After classes we'll be heading out on field trips and exploring the town.
One of the weekend we are going to leave immediately after class and return late on monday (most likely skip classes that day). The destination: Portugal on surfing safari. I've begun the research and I have found a few good breaks that should provide some decent waves during that time of year. Summer isn't the best time for surfing in Portugal/Spain BUT some places still do go off and it is our quest to find those breaks and surf them. Well it's my quest at least.
I am still returning from Europe on the same date, August 10th. I am going to kick back in Oregon and finish my business project until approximately August 27th and then I'm headingto Florida to visit my parents. I'm not sure on that exact date yet (it may be earlier). I will pin down that date pretty soon and let everyone know as soon as I do. I will be purchasing plane ticket(s) before I leave for Europe.
Welp, I better get back to my homework. Until another day.
I have begun to write the first draft of my auditing research paper. The paper focuses in on the changes, proposed by the AICPA and the PCAOB, to the auditing standard AU 319. AU 319 is the auditing standard on the consideration of internal control in a financial statement audit. As a result of the recent accounting scandals the US congress passed the Sarbanes Oxley act of 2002. In a nutshell the Sarbanes Oxley act attempts to restore confidence in the US capital marketplace by placing additional regulations on fiancial reporting, with the hopes of creating more reliable financial reporting. We can all thank Worldcom for this nice piece of legislation.
In a smart move Congress decided against attempting to solve the problems of the accounting and auditing world through direct legislation. Instead Congress, by use of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, created a new oversight board appropriately labeled the Public Companies Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). At this point the PCAOB is creating and documenting recommendations for changes to the standards followed by the audit and accounting world. These recommendations will eventually become standards that will need to be followed by all auditors and accountants of public companies.
At the same time another group, which has been around for many more decades, the American Institute of Certified public Accountants (AICPA) is also responding to the Sarbanes Oxley Act. The PCAOB has many great recommendations, however, their focus is solely on public companies which make up a very small percentage of companies in the US economy. The AICPA creates standards for use amongst auditors engaged in auditing the financial statement of both private and public companies. That is, an auditor of a public company must follow the standards of both the AICPA and the PCAOB while an auditor of a private company does not necessarily need to follow the standards set forth by the PCAOB.
The paper that I am writing is merely a reference paper documenting the proposed changes to the existing auditing standard AU 319.
In other news I will be going home today (thursday) sometime in the afternoon.
Today's Music mood: Alternative Rock, emo and Drum and Bass
Today's Stress Level: not that bad.. I have a LOT of homework to get through, my auditing course is sucking up all my time which is raising my stress level.
School Gripes: My financial analysis group presented our final project today. We evaluated the financial performance of the Nordstrom department stores. In an unexpected twist another group in our class also evaluated Nordstrom. Interestingly they came to the conclusion that the company was overvalued (i.e. stock price is overpriced) and we came to the conclusion that the company is undervalued (i.e. stock price is too low). We both had separate assumptions regarding the company, our group forecasted 7 years out to get past a lull brought about by a period of rapid expansion, the other group took the growth rate of the past five years and used 2005 as the terminal year. The past five years, however, was a period of rapid expansion which is coming to an end thus the past five years are, in our opinion, not reflective of the true growth of the company. It was interesting to see a different perspective.
Last night (tuesday night) my group in accounting ethics delivered our final presentation and turned in our report. The report focused on the questionable accounting practices of America Online, who merged with Time Warner to become AOL-Time Warner and is now called simply Time-Warner. In short America Online's business affairs and marketing departments would push the boundaries of the accounting standards to boost revenues. While many of their actions were not technically illegal they were found to be in violation of the "spirit" of many standards (i.e. misrepresentation of underlying financial position). The paper weighs in at 22 pages double-spaced pages. I wrote 20 of them, so come'on ask me about AOL I can discuss the topic at length (or maybe at nauseam).
This is the absolute best part about dead week. The library is open 24 hours. I find it amazing the PSU's library is no longer a 24 hours library except for dead week. Honestly, it is amazing. If you look at the time of this post it is the actual time I arrived back at home after leaving campus. I was able to crank out projects for two of my classes which will be 100% finalized by early evening monday. 2 down 2 to go.
Now I have ten days to study for econometrics, advanced auditing and write an exhaustive report on AU 319 and AT 501 compared to the AICPA's exposure draft, Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 and the PCAOB's recommendations. This is going to be a fun ten days I am just glad that the library is open twenty-fours hours now. thank-freakin goodness.
The week before final examinations in which (typically semester) colleges do not hold classes instead allowing their students to focus on studying for the upcoming final examinations; Dead Week. Although Portland State does not technically have a dead week I am very excited to know that Final exams are just around the corner which translates, in my head, to a chance to finally take a break. I am very very excited about the upcoming spring break. I will be teaching a class for SQLSoft during the break BUT the evenings and two weekends are completely FREE!!! (anyone want to head to a hot spring or two?)
In other news:
My mother came for a visit yesterday. We drove to Multnomah Falls via the Scenic Columbia Gorge highway starting in Troutdale. Due to Oregon being in the first stages of spring (yes I said it Oregon is now in the spring season winter is over, get over it) there was an abundance of water flowing over each of the falls (as compared to the summer time when the waterflow is reduced). I took a few decent pictures and the rest were horrible, my mom also took a ton of pictures. I'll try to post them later today or tomorrow.
My mother left Portland around 5pm last night as I had to get to a group meeting with several other classmates. The meeting went well, we were able to write a large portion of our paper that is due on tuesday. Once we turn in our report I will be done with that class!!! Done!!! 1 down 3 to go. After meeting with my group I rushed to pick up Linda and bring her back to my place so that we could sit down and watch some ER. I am an ER fanatic, I love the show. Unfortunately ER was not on last night instead they aired some crap about Princess Diana. Will someone please explain to me America's fascination with Princess Diana. I mean honestly, seriously, what's the deal?
Although ER was not on we were able to make the best of the evening. Unfortunately I wasn't able to watch last week's ER due to an excessively large amount of homework BUT I was able to record it. Our plan's shifted from simply watching ER to making dinner and then watching last week's ER.... In a flash Linda and I sprang up and drove down to Safeway. We came back with some whipping cream, parsley, garlic, shrimp and noodles; Linda's recipe. She cooked up a very nice meal for Aaron and I. I helped out by making brussels sprouts (ok so I put them in a steamer basket and walked away, but still). Once the meal was cooked Linda, Aaron and I sat down out, ate dinner and watched last week's ER.. Which was, unfortunately, somewhat disappointing BUT the girl from Bend it like Beckham (who is now on ER) is still HOT! (just so you know)
Random Tidbits
Coffee Lovers: Tall, Grande, Viente.. oh just watch this.
McDonalds: Is dropping SuperSize meals.. Now maybe American children will start dropping pant sizes
