Meet the Author – CA Hetvi Valia
A freshly qualified professional pursuing her career in the field of finance (Alumni Pinnacle Education). Other than an apparent unique sense of humor, she manages to break-free from the definitive ‘Stereotypical CA’ with her happy go lucky attitude towards life coupled with a keen interest for various dance forms and a natural flair for writing.
For all the Bollywood aficionados reading this, meet the real life version of Geet – just a lot smarter!
Hetvi is also pursuing her CFA Level 3 and is preparing for her next journey at a B School.
Darr Ke Aage Jeet Hai
*Stolen from Mountain Dew. To be read in Hindi.
Ep. 2: To Do or Not to Do – The Final Classes Saga.
The bead of sweat rolled down my forehead. My heels clattered against the rickety stairs. ‘Just half a flight left!’ I prayed desperately. It was 6:59 am. I threw myself across the corridor – the last stretch of the track for today – only to find the door sealed shut. ‘Oh, come on! There are still 10 seconds to 7 am on my watch!’ The door merely smiled condescendingly at me, while the two other rumpled personalities – joined by a third who skidded to a halt 0.5 seconds after me – looked morosely at me; the same thought running through our head, ‘We could have just slept more in bed!’. Letting out a sigh, we got into our routine; we leaned against the opposite wall, placed a bet on the number of people who would join us and practiced sleeping in an upright position for the next 20 minutes.
It was after all the CA-Final-7:00-am-Law-Lecture at Pinnacle Education by Mr. Amit Karia. His motto was Punctuality. The manual door was programmed to shut at dot 7:00 am; even a second’s delay would warrant a wait outside while missing class. Like clockwork, the doors would reopen at 7:20 for only 5 minutes to let in the ‘Late-comers’ before locking down again.
Pandemic-caught students in all spheres of education, not just those trying to become CAs, have (un)successfully bypassed this stage completely in their journeys.
I am pleased to announce that you are (re)invited to be a part of my CA journey – the ups and downs and the whole shebang strictly through my experiences (how else otherwise). I am who I am today because of the entire collection of these experiences; whether they relate to the mental strength during the Final Study Leave, attending (and bunking) classes during IPCC or the everyday life at office. Although I would love to give you the full season in HD, you would have to be content with weekly episodes else the buffering might take up a whole lot of your time. Oh, and I have ensured that these episodes can be viewed standalone and not necessarily in the chronological order.
Episode #1 readers, thank you for coming back! I hope you are as excited to unravel this episode as I am to share my experiences with you. You may skim through the brief recap above to jump right into Episode #2 – To Do or Not to Do: The Final Classes Saga.
I’ll put this in black and white to avoid confusion for the non-CA readers. The cycle when I underwent the Process.
The first lap – CPT classes. Characteristic – overlaps with standard XII summer break. Tenure – 3 months. Frequency – every day for 3 hours. Difficulty level – Yellow.
The second lap – IPCC classes. Characteristic – overlaps with first year of college. Tenure – 7 to 8 months. Frequency – every weekday for 6 hours. Difficulty level – Orange.
The last lap – CA Final classes. Characteristic – overlaps with Articleship (You can refer to Episode #1). Tenure – 24 months. Frequency – every weekend for 6 hours and some weekdays for 3 hours. Difficulty level – Red.
This approximates to 3,500 hours# – the amount of time I have spent at Pinnacle Education, the Chosen One (by me), as a student for CA. The number looks scary when you already have ten thousand other things to focus on; especially when you can attend a very real college compared to this pseudo one. Why then? Why are CA students lined up for classes?
Is the syllabus too tough? Yes. Is it too vast? Duh. Is it something you cannot do by yourself? No. But regardless of classes, you will put in the same effort and time by yourself; then why not make the Process more fun?
Pinnacle did it for me; combined the two aspects of fun and learning for the perfect blends of cheese in a cheese platter. Part 1 of their USP would be the notes. From the content of the notes to the quality of the paper used, it is super-organized and extremely well-detailed to assuage those with the OCD gene (a.k.a. people like me). Part 2 of their USP is our professors. They make sure to integrate theory with their practical experiences to give us a taste of the real world. This definitely makes those boring topics a little more doable. And of course, they put up with us and our tantrums.
As a batch, we were all partners in crime and consequently the punishments too. I think classes and my mind is flooded with reels; the ‘Oops, it’s big!!’ reel, the ‘Fight for the AC remote’ reel, the ‘I didn’t do it. Rajuuuu!’ reel, the ‘Pass me that dabba’ reel, the ‘Netflix during lectures’ reel, the ‘Asking Manish Sir doubts’ reel, the ‘Break turned Casino’ reel, the ‘Mass bunking’ reel, the ‘Do you have my notes?’ reel, the ‘Fastest right answer’ reel, the ‘I have no idea what is happening in class’ reel, the ‘This is my place; not yours!’ reel, the ‘Locked out / thrown out of class’ reel, the ‘I have too much office work to come for class’ reel, the ‘Train was late excuse’ reel, the ‘Let’s chill at Hetvi’s after class’ reel, the ‘Who will get the cake for the professor’ reel and so many more.
Looking back, there is a lot of looking back that I have doing lately, I am going to miss these classes despite the thousand ruined weekends and the million complaints.
Customary disclaimer: Choose your classes at your own risk research without relying on others.
# Just a Tip to Survive the 3,500 hours (Especially the CA Final Classes): Occasionally (translate to once in two months) bunk the class. Do it smartly though. Maximize the fun while minimizing the bunking. Make sure you have a friend like mine to steal banana milkshakes from. Serves as good incentive to attend class sometimes.
The End.
This episode will self-destruct in 5 seconds if you have downloaded it and lesser if you choose to stream it. So, I shall just end with a more sophisticated (Latin) version of the title – ‘Veni. Vidi. Vici.’. which translates to ‘I came. I saw. I conquered.’
I hope you do too!
Stay tuned for the Episode #3: All In – The Study ‘Break’ Saga soon on the journey ahead, if you have missed the trail please do check Episode #1: The Articleship Saga.
*Disclaimer: This is a personal blog. Any views or opinions represented in this blog are personal and belong solely to the blog owner and do not represent those of the people, institutions or organizations that the owner may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity, unless explicitly stated. Any views or opinions are not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company or individual.
