My name is Zach Sumner, and I am a senior at the University of Central Oklahoma. I am a dual major, currently working towards degrees in Accounting and Finance. The reasons that I want to earn my Certified Management Accountant’s (CMA) designation are manifold: I want to be able to communicate my value to future employers; I want to grasp these fundamental concepts as much as possible because I really enjoy Accounting and what it offers; and finally, managerial accounting is a good field to go into because it is so adaptable to the needs of whatever business you find yourself in.
As any other Accounting majors out there will know, it is incumbent on us as students to do our utmost to differentiate ourselves as much as possible and to reach for the certifications, skills, abilities, and experiences that we happen to come across. Education is the opportunity to change our lives for the better, akin to the idea of agency, but it doesn’t mean much if we don’t step out of where we are comfortable to pursue the incredible path of mastery. As Jeffrey Garten, Dean of the Yale School of Management succinctly put it, “A vision without execution is hallucination.”
Plato had this idea that once you learned a fundamental truth, it is like being freed from a cave you had been in your whole life. As you stumble outside and see the sun for the first time, feel the grass, smell the sea air, can you imagine how inane it would be to go back into your cave, to again be satisfied with musty darkness? The obvious parallel is education: Once we have started down the path of obtaining knowledge, why would we ever go back?
That is why I want to get this certification.
