Keener

I sat there, staring at the screen, unable to bring any cohesive thoughts into my brain, or even to grasp some minute bit of the information I had been given, wishing someone would slap me upside the head and yell, "You're an artist! What are you doing in an accounting class?"

We had been taught a brief lesson, the instructor having assumed that we knew a certain amount of background knowledge, and had been given a list of entries to feed into the computer. I sat, drawing a complete blank, an expression of sorrowful despair on my face, clueless as to where to even start.

"Accounting?" you ask?

Yes, well, Simply Accounting. The computer program. I'm taking a course for the job I've started - doing the books for our church. I've been working a little with the program already, but thought I should take a course so I can really understand what I'm doing.

"...so I can really understand..." <- key phrase.

After last Thursday, I wasn't so sure that would be the case.

Numbers and I, we get along fine, as long as they're written down and displayed in some kind of an "image". Explain some number-concept in theory, it goes in one ear and out my left nostril. But draw me a picture, or a diagram, and now you're talkin'.

So I struggled to figure out what the heck "Debit" and "Credit" meant, and to decipher this instructor's "digital" explanations. (pun intended - tee hee!) He even took some time with me alone at my computer to explain it, drawing up a little chart (um, so much for my understanding visuals), and explaining it all in a simpler way.

That simpler way sounded to me like he was speaking Hungarian.

And I don't speak Hungarian.

I left the class frustrated, disappointed, embarrassed, and disheveled. I'm a keener, you know! You know this if you've been reading this blog for a while! I have a hard time not doing things really, really well.

It's so strange for me to read those last few sentences. Until the past year or so, I've never thought of myself as anything close to a keener or perfectionist, but I've realized, or maybe I've changed, that it's really a driving force in me.

So I went home. I took a look at the answer key that the instructor had given us for the entries we did in class, to check to see how we did.

I got every last one right.

What?

It felt kind of good, because, yay, I got them right. But then, what? WHAT? It didn't help my confidence at all, because I didn't know what I had done to do them right. You know what I mean? ARG!

So, last night was class number 2, and wow. I've really improved. I took some time at the beginning of class to just slowly look at the numbers and formulas, and to try and decipher some kind of understanding that would be acceptable to my kind of brain, and I think I did it! After the first class, I had felt like I had about 20% understanding of what we were doing. After last night, I'd say it was upped to about 75% or 80%. Nice.

So, on I go. On I learn. On I keen....?

Wish me luck, or pray, whatever your habit. I'll need it, because I'm like a cow out of pasture in this territory. (Hey, I just didn't want to use the typical "fish out of water" saying, okay?)