Risk, Risk, Risk!

Okay, well my first real update since the semester has started. What have I been doing?

What I have been doing is a little class called Accounting 3233: Internal Audit. It is part of a 4-course sequence which is the best internal audit program in the world, making this the most rigorous class I have ever taken. Most of you probably do not even realize what internal auditing is. Let's learn together from the "Professional Practices Framework": Internal Auditing is an independent, objective assurance and consulting activity designed to add value and improve an organization's operations. It helps an organization accomplish its objectives by bringing a systematic, disciplined approach to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control and governance processes. Capiche?

A few tasty bites to give you an idea of how this class runs:

• The first week of class involved my fellow students and I devoting approximately 30 hours toward this particular class.
• There are usually two case studies (projects) due each week. They are always group/team assignments. During the semester, a student can work only work with any other student on a team once.
• The third class day involved a test on approximately 230 pages of practices for internal auditors.
• The first 2.5 weeks of class included attending practitioner presentations every night for one to two hours.
• There are seminars on Saturdays and I was able to have coffee at 6:15 a.m. with the professor one morning.
• There are impromptu student presentations. Also, the instructions for team audits are vague and the students have to hash those out themselves.
• The bottom 1/4 (in terms of grades) is asked to drop the class. The drop rate winds up being about 50 percent.
• Students are required to dress up for class every day and wear name tags. There will be a networking exam, in which we will have to know the names of all 65 people in the class. Ten students will be selected at random and we will be forced to identify them all. A grade of 9 out of 10 will be equivalent to "0." Only 10 out of 10 is a "100."
• There are three grades in the course: objective, subjective, and final exam. The student's final grade is the lowest of these three averages.
• I have seven interviews for summer internships next Monday (and one Tuesday). This is because recruiters come specifically to LSU, noting the excellent students produced through the LSU Center for Internal Auditing (LSUCIA) program.

In essence, this program dominates an individual's life while he or she is enrolled in it, but it provides fantastic career opportunities. Exciting.

Other than internal auditing, I also have recently been reading through the Book of Isaiah, spoke at my high school alma mater's Christian outreach a couple weeks ago, visit Amanda and do wedding planning as often as possible, try to stay at least minimally conscious of my friends' lives, keep my side of the dorm room clean, and walk around campus singing the song "Dismantle.Repair." Oh, wait, PLUG! for the new Anberlin album coming out February 20. (See last blog post.) The excellent song, "Dismantle.Repair." is the best I've heard from Anberlin, and it is posted at their purevolume account.