I'm on hour 16 of my corporate finance midterm, and I'm going insane.

blahalalahalahaha CRAZY!

I’m a year into my MBA program taking two classes a semster, this one is finance and marketing classes. The corporate finance (on value creation) is interesting (not really REALLY interesting), but the midterm is this ridiculously long and complex set of problems.

3 questions, of which they go a-g, then i,ii,iii,… each sub-sub part has multiple questions in it, and then you have to calculate each sub sub sub sub part over a 6 year period (well, thank God for excel).

C’mon man, is it really necessary to have something this drawn out? I’m working full time +, and barely get to have any sort of life. I did it to myself though.

I guess some parts are paying off, I got a promotion Friday (Sr. Analyst – go me!)-- and come with my own staff. Swell!

I come from a computer science background, where they will talk about 10 different ways of queueing memory (lifo, fifo, etc…) and at the end they say, "yea but in the end X is what we use because all the others are not realistic. So I come from that mentality where there is generally only one way to do things.

Not the case for finance. “this project will generate $10,000 over it’s life. But put it in present value, oh, and compare the NPV to the IRR, no wait, use MIRR, oh, include risk, and factor in the WACC.” “The values aren’t consistent? oh, well. Yea, sucks.”

I have a new respect for guys who do corporate finance work for a living, and even more respect for people like me, who give up their lives to improve themselves and further their education. Classes Monday and Thursday night (right from work). Library on many others (like right now.)

It’s 3PM EST. I’m hoping to have the exam finished by 10PM EST, where there is a victory cigar waiting for me at my apartment. The worst part of all this? The fact that I stated at the beginning that this is the midterm, and a few weeks from now I’ll have a repeat of this uber-exam with the final.

Encouragement and empathy is welcome!

Yay you!

Good luck, and may the gods of examinations smile upon you!

(16h? Yikes.)

Keep the coffee flowing!

Well uh it’s 12:19AM the next day.

Did you finish? Did you die? Are you not quite dead yet? How was the cigar?

You have more respect for . . . yourself?

I kid, I kid. I’m actually doing the exact same thing as you–MBA at night, full time job during the day. Oh, and two kids at home. I’m done with 5 of the twelve classes and I’m enrolled in three more this semester.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t yet made a difference in my job status here, and I doubt it ever will; I’ll have to leave here to cash in on it. Which I don’t mind, but I’d like to leave here as soon as I can, and I think that nobody out there will want me until I’m actually finished with classes (which will be in December).

Good luck with the rest of your classes!