I graduated from Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) and passed the CPA Licensure Exam (CPALE) both in 2019 when I was just 20 years old, and this is the story of how my life gets f*****.

Clueless Beginning

First of all, I chose accountancy as pre-law because being an Aries, I love arguments and more so love it when I win. But before applying to any schools, I remember the time when Pope Francis came here to the Philippines, and our whole family went out to see him. When I saw him, I prayed with my whole heart that God will place me to a good school to pursue and luckily, finish accountancy. Fortunately, I did pass the entrance exam and was qualified to take up accountancy in PUP which is one of the hardest courses to get into because the standards are pretty high. You have to achieve a certain level of scores, one of the highest, and should have a high grade way back in high school.

At that moment she knew, she f***** up

On our first day, the administrator explained the policy in going through the Accountancy program. It was only then said to us that we have to maintain a grade of 2.0 for all the major subjects that we have or as we call the "dos policy" and if we don't achieve this grade, we have to pass a qualifying exam to continue with the program. If we don't also pass the qualifying exam, the only choice was to either shift course or transfer school. We also learned that we will be taking a whopping 29 units per semester for the rest of our years in college. Alongside it is that we have to take a 9 unit summer class every summer vacation. It was a shocker for all of us and I remember that from that moment on, we feel like our future is uncertain. Luckily, one of my classmates was a classmate from my high school so freshmen paranoia is not really much and I made great friends along the way.

Accepting that all things are f*****

In my 1st year and 2nd year, it was really stressful because, alongside the accounting majors that we had, we also had Math and Law subjects which are way too hard. We also lost some classmates due to the dos policy which was sad because it reminds us how a quiz, presentation, or exam can change someone's life so fast. In the 3rd year, we had Law and Taxations subjects which are to die for. These are the times when I met coffee and sleepless nights, the times when even though you study so hard, it will never be enough and we cannot just easily give up because our families are depending on us.

Things get more f***** up

In our 4th year, we had some internships which is really a great time since we got a taste of what we will do when we graduate. We also had feasibility studies which is a subject where you and your friends basically use school to do overnights.

But in the last semester, this is when the world stopped for most of us. We had to go through 8 subjects and each subject would have 3 evaluation exams to prepare us for the upcoming board exams. So all in all, we had to take 24 evaluation exams starting January to March, 8 exams per month. Most of us sacrificed a lot for these evaluation exams, I rarely go out with friends, I even miss out on family occasions, just so that I can use the extra time for review or sleep. This is the time where we just go from school to home and home to school. It almost felt like we were robots and that we were trapped and the only way to get out was to graduate.

Things don't get better......

Luckily, I passed all the exams and was able to graduate on time. I wish it was that happy ending but in our class, we were 45 and only 22 get to graduate, only half of the class gets to graduate. It was sad, leaving friends behind but that's a sad reality, we sometimes outgrow people even though we don't want to.

My Licensure exam journey is for another story, it's another hell of a ride and I just wanted to publish this to let people know the pressure of being a student, accountancy or not, and if all of our learnings are really relevant to the real world, especially now in an online class. Lately I've been thinking if all of our sacrifices and hard work are really worth it and looking back, I have to reminisce all the things we have to go through just to achieve those 3 letters (CPA) alongside our name.

So again, I graduated from Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) and passed the CPA Licensure Exam both in the year 2019 when I was just 20 years old, and this is the story of how my life gets fucked.