Accounting, a business elective offered at BSM, is valuable for students who are looking to pursue business majors in college. The class itself focuses on the financial aspects of companies—namely the flow of capital within those businesses.

Accounting gives students greater insight into how a business operates. “I hope to learn the language of business and to be able to explain business transactions in the future. This class will help me get a head start to my future accounting classes in college,” junior Blake Mahmood said.

The accounting class also practices the kinds of problems businesses would encounter. “Work time in class includes working on accounting problems with hypothetical businesses in which we balance their accounts,” Mahmood said.    

Accounting will help students in college by providing them with important background information before taking fundamental accounting courses in college. “Accounting will help me in the future because I want to go into business when I’m in college. A typical day is vocab notes and balancing equations. I think it will benefit me in college,” senior Harrison Shibley said.

Accounting is a required course in college for those who are looking to pursue a potential career in the business field. “Statistically, about 20% of majors are in the business field. If you are interested in marketing, general business management or human resource management or other majors, you are going to have to take two accounting classes in college,” teacher Mr. John Sabol said.  

Taking an accounting course helps facilitate the learning process when students take accounting college. “Often times those are some of the most challenging classes in the business school. Those classes move really fast and those professors often times might not explain things as well as they need to be explained. You might hear it but not get many opportunities to practice it. A lot of students who go to college find their accounting classes the most difficult class they take, most confusing, most frustrating, and probably the most likely to fail that class,” Sabol said.

Taking an accounting class in college has real-world applications in the workplace. “I was picking up my daughter from daycare and I went to the director’s office. She was the director of the daycare and she was looking at the financial statements associated with her job as the director and she was really frustrated and she said ‘I went to school and I have a degree in early childhood development. I went to school to become a teacher. I never thought I would ever need to know anything about accounting.’ She was working as a director for a bunch of teachers and for that job she needed to know the accounting and she didn’t. She was really surprised at how important it was to know the accounting,” Sabol said.

Taking an accounting course in college is useful even if they don’t plan on working in the business field. “It also helps students who think of business as a fallback. Let’s say you want to be an engineer but you’re not sure if you will end up in engineering, and you decide to go to business. If you are interested in engineering, or in the medical field or education, you might find yourself in a leadership position and even if you are a manager you are going to have to understand the business side of that organization whether it’s a school or a hospital or an engineering firm,” Sabol said.