I have a confession to make.  I’m not good at finance.  In fact in the financial evolutionary scale of intelligence, I’m somewhere near an amoebic life form with a penchant for self procreation.  Seriously, I’m looking at our discussion question this week and trying to determine what an investor sees by studying cash flows in an income and balance sheet statement.  Okay I did the reading assignment and I understand the purpose of a cash flow, income statement, etc.  In fact, thanks in large part to my MBA Essentials course I can even prepare such documents in a pinch.  I even know what the intended uses of such financial statements are for but to be able to visualize what an investor sees?  Well, I probably resemble Al Bundy at a Mensa meeting.  I feel like this stuff is supposed to be clicking at this point.  That the concepts are supposed to be neatly falling into place much like that of a well played Tetris game.  Unfortunately I am trying to fight the voice in my head that says “who cares, let’s do something else” when reading the material.  

The problem is that I lack any sort of passion for this type of stuff but I want to be able to understand it as one day I dream of being a wildly successful investor in the stock market.  Since I have been searching out jobs using “MBA” as a keyword search guess what I have discovered?  If you said at least 9 out of 10 of the jobs I found were in finance and or accounting you were right.  The rest were split between operations management and economic prediction voodoo (of which I stink at economics worse than finance).  I feel almost like a fraud, earning an MBA and easily 1/3 of the material is stuff that causes my eyes to glaze over and I start to drool whenever anyone starts talking about it.  I just can’t get motivated to devour this stuff yet I know that as soon as I’m minted as an MBA people will expect me to know it.  

Here’s the thing, I have been exposed to it, I’ve even dabbled in it, but I don’t feel that I have an in depth understanding of this stuff.  It’s almost like the educational equivalent of a one nigh stand.  But the rub is that if I did have to get in depth on this stuff, I’d probably not do it at all.  And yes I understand an MBA is an overview not an in depth study (that’s what the MS and MA are for) but even still.  So I guess I feel guilty at my lack of desire to learn this stuff and I am learning exactly how much I DON’T know.  Amazing how few things in this world can make you feel dumber than getting an education isn’t it?  And the irony is that people that I work with think I’m Mr. Smarty-Pants because I’m getting an education.  They don’t know that I know what I don’t know.  Get it?