Adverse Opinion

I hate auditing.

There. I said it.
I really do.
I'm just not good at it. I think the only things in school that I've been worse at were chemistry and statistics.

Undergraduate auditing wasn't so bad. Maybe it was genuinely easier, or maybe it's because I had it right after Intermediate hellish stressful nightmare III, so auditing just seemed easier by comparison.

But graduate auditing is terrible.

You: "What is so bad about it? What even is auditing, really? Why do I ask so many questions?"

Here is the definition of auditing:

Auditing is a systematic process of objectively obtaining and evaluating evidence regarding assertions about economic actions and events to ascertain the degree of correspondence between the assertions and established criteria and communicating the results to interested users.

Got all that? Yeah, me neither.

Here's my definition:

Making sure things are done right in a company's financials and write boring reports and memos to people that never read them.

What makes it so terrible is that SO much of this is "judgement call" stuff. So some people think that it should be presented this way, and other people think it's not material.
And I'm so BAD at it because I don't pick up on what's really going on, and so I don't know how to fix it. And then when I do know how to fix it, it's not material and doesn't matter.

That's what's so hard about being external to the company. I just don't know.

I'm good with the numbers, though. And I'm good at understanding the entries/accounting stuff.
But I'm bad at judgement, which is why I am perfectly fine with doing grunt work and not writing the horribly boring reports and memos.

"to interested users."
It's almost laughable.

But since my life so far has been very ironic, I will probably end up working in audit and enjoying it.
Until then, I will plow through the remaining 17 days of this course and do well enough on the tests to outweigh my grossly negligent judgemental mistakes.

Disclaimer,
TWS