Scenes from a Marriage

School's been in for about five months here on the sandbar, and this semester I've added a course to my teaching repertoire. In addition to teaching the youth of the country how to string five words together to construct a professional sentence, I am now teaching this same group of students that 1 + 1 equals increased assets which improves the balance sheet and if you're a sole proprietor, a partnership or even a corporation, all that added together is a very good thing. In other words, I'm teaching Introduction to Accounting.

Those that know me well, know that I have NEVER considered myself someone that's adept at anything mathematical. I mean, I'm the one that reaches for an excel spreadsheet to check if 49 divided by 7 really equals, uhm, 7. (It does, by the way). So, when they asked me to teach this course too, I was a little bit apprehensive (just a little).

Starting last November I've been cramming and have learned that assets = liabilities plus owner's equity. Accumulated amortization is indeed a contra asset. The income statement is linked to the statement of owner's equity which is tied to the balance sheet and holy smokes, you have to report in a timely manner because some group of monks sitting around Renaissance Florence decided to invent the "Rules of Accounting" and those celibate bastards decided that having a single entry accounting system wasn't good enough....so they created a double entry accounting system and no-one in the last 500 years has come up with a more simplified system, so, YES, the GAAP Timeliness rule says you must report your information at regular and consistent intervals and holy shit, I cannot believe I now know this stuff!!!

Ahem.

I've learned a lot in the last few months. I teach the course in four different modules and as I work my way through my first rotation teaching this course there are many days when I am but one page ahead of my students. Read a page, teach a page has, on occasion, been my strategy - especially in my current module of adjusting entries.

In my attempt to gain some space between my learning and the students' learning, I was laying about in bed on a quiet Sunday morning recently, with Buzz snoring softly beside me. As I lay there I was planning Monday's lesson in my head, trying to figure out a way to make the theory & numbers jump off the page for my students. Upon awaking Buzz rolled over, snuggled in and asked what I was thinking about.

"Unadjusted Trial Balances" was my reply.

At which point my husband, the Accountant, sat bolt upright in bed and said "BABY!! I CAN'T BELIEVE AFTER ALL THIS TIME, YOU'RE LYING IN BED TALKING ACCOUNTING - THAT'S SO HOT!"