Tori is a NINJA CPA Blogger.

Hey Everyone,

I just wanted to take a few minutes and catch you up on my exam prep progress and other goings on.

To refresh everyone, I started a temp job as an accounting clerk for a small city 2 days after Christmas. Because I no longer have all day everyday to work on my exam prep, I started to implement the ELL Study Plan.

It has been just over 3 weeks since I have been working again. Things are going well at the office and I feel pretty comfortable performing my routine responsibilities without assistance from others in the finance department.

As far as studying goes that is a whole other ballgame in entirety. You may remember from my previous post that my commute is 2-2.5 hours every day. I just started working 4/10s in order to have the same hours as the rest of the department.

This also means that I have 3 days off each week. I was able to pull off the ELL study plan for about 10 work days before I started to feel exhausted and came down with a small head cold. I also must point out that I was quite productive, I got through 3 chapters in one week.

Now, I am feeling better, but my days are not any shorter. I leave the house at 6 AM and do not get home until around 8:30 PM.

Over the last weekend (3 days) I studied zero hours. I slept all day on Saturday, spent some quality time with my husband and dogs on Sunday, and ran all the errands needed to get through the week on Monday.

I think that next weekend I will be able to allocate way more time to study on the weekend. I want to commit to at least 6 hours a day each weekend day and 1-2 hours at night after I get home from work.

I cannot be thankful enough for having such a supportive husband. He takes care of the house and entertains my dogs all day long, and even makes sure I have healthy lunch and snacks for my super long workdays.

I know that going into busy season, others are working long hours and will share the same struggles as me for finding time to study. I think a good way to approach it is to think of it like saving money. Don't save what you have left after spending, spend what you have left after saving.

With studying, I really need to study and make time for other activities aside from work, instead of trying to carve out time to study from my other non work activities.

Well, I am going to try to get through a solid hour of studying now, before I go to bed. Have a great week NINJAs. Keep working hard and stay focused. The end will eventually be here!

Tori