Examination Failed

Well, yesterday I failed the examination for the first Financial module course. I then failed the second examination. Before failing the third examination, I decided to stop, not wanting to waste the instructor’s time.

Basically, the examination consists of an Acumatica instructor checking my Acumatica version to see if I was able to perform all the exercises that were in the course material. They spot check different things to make sure that I followed the exercises to the letter. I thought I had completed the exercises correctly because they seemed easy enough, but the examination proved otherwise. If there is anything that is not exactly what they are looking for, you fail the exam. As the instructor put it, “this isn’t horseshoes,” being close doesn’t count.

Now, I get to re-perform the exercises. This time I am going to do the examination after each course instead of attempting them all at the end. There are six courses:

• F100 Hands-On Financials (V4.0)
• F110 Advanced General Ledger (V3.0)
• F120 Advanced Accounts Receivable (V3.0)
• F130 Advanced Accounts Payable (V3.0)
• F140 Advanced Cash Management (V4.0)
• F300 Inter-Company Accounting (V3.0)

It has been almost three months since I started the first financial module course. I honestly don’t remember that much from it. So, although I am definitely discouraged that I didn’t pass, it might be a good thing that I have to redo everything. Going through things a second time will help to reinforce what I learned.

This time around I am going to make a few changes:

• Take the examination for each course immediately after performing the exercises rather than wait until the end (it’s hard to remember what you did three months ago).
• Create a separate company for each course and name each company with the ID of the course (F100, F110, F120, F130, F140, F300). That way I can be sure that the only transactions to take place are due to the certification exercises.
• Apply the Pomodoro technique instead of staying up really late trying to finish a course.

This somewhat humiliating experience of failing the exam reminds me of my Aunt Carol. She failed Statistics twice in college before finally passing the course. She then went on to get her PhD and wound up teaching the course at the university. The point is that many times the harder it is to learn something, the better you understand it in the end. Especially with ERP, the tortoise wins the race. Failing the examination also helps remind me that my goal is to be APAL, not ANEXPERT. Even once I eventually pass the examination, my goal is to maintain a learner’s attitude towards the financial module. There are always new things to learn.

Let the Financial module course redo begin…