The Longest Day

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(This post could also be called "Eight Hours of Financial Management.")

We had our Financial Management 1 (FM 1) final exam yesterday and boy was it a monster exam. The exam was originally from 9 am to 2 pm, and I thought it was more than enough, but, boy, am I glad they changed the schedule to 8:30 am to 5 pm. I'm glad our Asian Business Systems (ABS) professor, Brahm Prakash, was willing to reschedule our classes to next year to give us more time to do our finals.

The exam had two parts: Part 1 was a 40-point multiple choice section that focused on capital budgeting, weighted cost of capital (WACC), earnings per share (EPS) and stock prices, and capital structure. Everybody in class thought that part was very challenging. After taking that part of the finals, I felt there was an anvil that fell down from the heavens and dashed my MBA hopes.

Part 2 was a case analysis and I think it was harder than any of our Written Analysis of Cases (WAC) where we're given 13 hours to finish. For this part we were given six. The case had us analyze financial statements, make projections, look at the capital structure, and do some capital budgeting. Damn! That's a lot if you as me. (Of course, finance folks will tell me they did all of those in an hour and they know that like the back of their hands). I found the analysis part very difficult.

After the test, everybody was just in vacation mode. We will have our Christmas break this Friday and a lot of MBA students will go to their home country. The FM 1 exam was probably AIM's way of saying "Bon Voyage!"

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As for me, after the exams, I dropped by my alma mater, because I was invited to teach for one session for an eCommerce class in their MBA program. I found the teaching session enjoyable and I was glad I'm teaching something of my element, as opposed to teaching something like finance or accounting.

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