The perfect degree for Aspies: Accounting

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A set of interrelated activities, documents, and technologies designed to collect data, process it, and report information to a diverse group of internal and external decision makers in organizations. After reading through what I will be learning in this subject, I might be okay, but it would just help alot more if this class were not only avaliable online but in the classroom. I think sometimes I feel like I had ADD and I can't finish reading a paragraph because my mind is trying to turn every word or sentence into a picture so I can understand it more but it's all coming too fast. I would usually have to read a paragraph 3+ times to maybe understand it, and thats a maybe.

Some of the subject matter which i'll just read the chapter titles include, Role and Purpose of Accounting Information Systems, Transaction Processing in the AIS, Professionalism and Ethics, Internal Controls, Documentation Techniques, Flowcharting, Data Flow Diagramming, REAL modeling, Systems Analysis and Information Technology, Information Systems Concepts, E-business and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, Sales/Collection Process, Business Process Management, Computer Crime and Information Technology Security(Actuatly sounds enteresting), Professional Certifications and Career Planning, and Auditing and Evaluating the AIS. I'm going to stick with it because I think if I put my mind to it I can do it, even if I don't remember it afterwords, hopefully thats what the 2 years of straight accounting courses will help me figure it out better after I graduate from basics.

Accounting? Man, that sounds like my idea of hell, to be honest. Plus, me being rubbish with math and organisation, I wouldn't ever be able to have a job in that field. I'd much rather work in the creative industry (which is what I'm studying to do). I guess that makes me a minority within a minority, lol.

Googled "autistic accountant" and came up with this thread. Accounting is the perfect occupation for me. Love it.

First and foremost, I feel I must apologise for commenting on a thread that has not been posted in for over two years.

I am bumping this topic because I desperately need to study a subject that is suited to my respective strengths - the few that there are. I have attempted computer programming but I didn't find it terribly interesting and running the software was far from simple either.

Bookkeeping is now on my mind as I read that individuals on the spectrum who do not think predominantly in pictures could potentially flourish in the accountancy sector. However, I do fear that my mathematical skills are not at the required level to be successful in this industry, as I only got a C at school in maths.

Does anyone have an educated idea or know how strong one's mathematical abilities need to be to study accounting?

My mental arithmetic skills are far from exceptional, but I would say they are at least average.

For instance, I know my squared numbers up to at least 35, and my cubed numbers up to at least 15. But that isn't particularly impressive, is it?

I know nothing!

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

I am a number junkie, I am obsessed with numbers, I live eat and breathe numbers and a I adore anything to do with maths. I am studying the history of algebra in the islamic world right now, and I can't get enough of it.

...and I hated accounting.

I studied it in high school and took two years worth of classes before I dropped out, here's how it went, your results may vary.

I thought it would be a perfect degree for me, easy to deal with numbers, and could operate a 10 key extremely fast. I thought that crunching numbers and such all day would be a good thing, but it turned out not to be so. Not realizing that there was a fundamental mismatch for me was my biggest regret regarding that "career choice".

Essentially, because the actual work was very easy, I began to let my mind wander while I was working at the tasks at hand, and then began wondering about what the actual numbers meant. Things like $320,000 in cash and $500,000 in property (just as an example) didn't strike me as a particularly useful way of seeing things. I mean, cash buys things instantly, but a half million dollar property doesn't trade, sell, or generate cash nearly as fast, nor is it as useful, movable, etc. But yet, at the end of the day $820,000 was the total assets, but it seemed so fundamentally wrong to me.

To me, I wanted to move the cash column to the top and keep things like property near the bottom, but I was told not to and that it would come as a later concept (liquid assets). But then I realized that the value of things wasn't really fixed either as people's moods shifted all the time, values drop (depreciation), market's crash, wants change, Chinese economy goes boom, one thing after another, and that got me wondering why I would account for everything in the first place.

That's when I was told that my job was to going to be to continually update things like that and keep track of things, but when I began wondering further, I then thought...why? It was then that I realized the ultimate purpose of me was to be a sort of "petrol gauge" in a car, telling the operator what was what, and nothing more.

I realized then, that the love of maths had nothing to do with accounting. It's like how one loves painting and decides to work in a paint mixing factory. Sounds similar, very different things when you think about it.


Anyway, I stuck with it, obsessed with the idea that I would be okay with it because numbers was so easy for me, but that was a mistake. I couldn't get over feeling like I was a guy stirring a bucket of paint, when all I wanted to do all day was simply paint.


Completely my own experience, but that's coming from someone who loves numbers.

I don't know if accounting is the perfect degree for Aspies. I graduated with a bachelor's degree in accounting two years ago and haven't been back in the field of accounting since this time last year. Accounting is more logic than math. Sure, you need to understand 0 through 9. You need to understand what goes into a balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flows, statement of owners equity, etc at the very basics. However, the numbers tell a story about the finances of a company. A person would need to be good at logic to make deductions, based upon the numbers say from a company's annual report or financial statements.

Even more so, accounting is where having good people skills are key. You have to be able to work well with others, and with a variety of end users who will use the financial information. In sum, accounting is a great field to go into if you're good with numbers and people but great with logic.

Is there really a perfect degree for Aspies? My stepdaughter, who is an Aspie, speaks a lot more than I ever will as an Aspie on the spectrum. For her, the perfect degree would have something to do with talking with a lot of people. Not me.

I done the same thing and got the same response to.

Maybe that is what I should have done instead of investing all the time I did to graduate with a bachelor's degree in accounting. Would have taken much less time and I could have been spent more time doing other things instead of studying (like autism advocacy work).

I have Dyscalculia which is a math learning disability & is fairly common with us Aspies so accounting won't be a good job fit for some of us like me.

My brain started this sentence and screamed, "Oh God, no, please make it stop! Too much information... tooooo much!" Obviously, math isn't for me... LOL!

I took an accounting course in school... I hated it. I couldn't understand any of it.

And when I had my AS diagnostic assessment done, it came back that I should try to go to work for something that involved using my love of facts. I don't remember ever telling the clinician that I loved facts.. lol

To whom it may concern:

My daughter 19 years old is currently taking accounting in University of Toronto. She finish basic accounting, economics,
calculus..She is currently taking Management and just found out there's case study in her midterm and she blank out.
Her learning style in any subject is someone has to sit down with her and study the chapter. Then she will answer every question from the book. Get past exams from professors and keep practicing until she understood. She was able to get GPA 3.9 for first year. Her weakness is comprehension in case study, maybe marketing next term will also be a dilemma. Need lots of advise from you, though I understood no two aspergers are alike. She is very determined. Works very hard.
Pls send me a contact number or email address so we can connect. Don't want her to suffer too much from pursuing her degree.

I had to do an accounting module as part of my computer science course and was terrible at it. The teacher always said I should be grateful it was ungraded as I'd have definitely failed otherwise.

I'm terrible at arithmetic (I still do not know my times-tables and can't divide) but pretty good at abstract maths as long as I have a calculator for the basics.

I took an accounting course at my local college a few years ago. It was more advanced than bookkeeping but not at degree level. I was hoping to get better at my own business accounts.

The reason I quit the course -
Most/all the other students were really stupid and we had to move through the course materials at their pace. The course was filled with people who couldn't do maths. But worse, every time we had a coffee break or lunchtime I got mobbed by a group who thought I had some sort of civic obligation to use my time to explain the lesson to them.

No doubt most of them managed to finish the course without me. I suppose this kind of highlights the need for accountants who are fluent in mathematics.

Maybe for some but to me accounting seems like the WORST job ever.