TWILAP, Two Weeks in the Life of an Accounting Professor. Most people think I only work a few hours per week, just the time spent in the classroom. They aren’t aware of all the behind the scenes activity. In this series, I’ll journalize on what it’s like to be a professor.
7:40-8:15 a.m. E-mail. Francine McKenna at re: The Auditors has a provocative piece called, “Suing Audit Firms re: Madoff: The Iguana In The Room“. As I understand her, she thinks that investor plaintiffs stand a better than normal chance of getting international umbrella organizations for the auditing firms to pony up. I hope so, seems reasonable. There is an increasing amount of coordination amongst the largest international firms. This coordination expands the responsible legal entity to the umbrella organization, IMHO.
8:15-9:35 a.m. Grading.
9:35-9:40 a.m. E-mail.
10:00-10:25 a.m. In transit.
10:25-4:00 p.m. Classes and office hours. It is the first day of class after a break. In general, students are are tired. So am I after staying up too late last night, grading.
I like teaching at Concordia because of the small classes. This semester, my classes have 19, 25 and 8 students. Here is a shot of Managerial accounting before we got underway.
I really like this classroom (my others are more traditional) because students must sit around tables. Much of the education literature describe how students learn more if they are working together during class, instead of sitting listening to a professor. It is so true. I try to bring something to every Managerial Accounting class for the students to work on, in small groups. Sometimes it happens that when clever students at one table figure out how to do something, they share with other tables. The nicest thing is the furniture is organized much like that of a kindergarten classroom.
4:00-5:30 p.m. E-mail.
5:30-6:30 p.m. Grading. Ugh!
10:20-11:59 p.m. Grading. Ugh!
Over and out.
Dear Prof,
Yes, I think most cases against the audit firms would do better to add the international firms. Makes for more places to pull potential judgements from and we need to sort out these issues in front of multiple judges and juries rather than allowing quiet settlement of individual isolated cases continue to obscure the larger issues.
It’s going to take more than a few to open the closet.