CIMA synergy through my eyes

NOTE: This is just an opinion, if you don't agree it doesn't matter. This is my story. Read with a grain of salt.

As expected, we didn't make it to the next round. In fact none of the IPTA groups made it to the finals. The 4 groups chosen were all IPTS', which wasn't a surprise really but it was kind of disappointing to see the difference in standards between us. Combined with the fact that we were already overworked, horrendously under prepared and facing something that was completely new to us, well that just spelled disaster from the very beginning.

It all started with an invite from Afiq. Oh, this might be interesting i thought to myself. So, we formed what would later be named Synergy to tackle this challenge head on. We were all fired up and ready, until the first meeting with the lecturer. Apparently, a university could only send 2 teams but 3 invites were sent. She of course suggested team combination, and of course my ego couldn't accept it so it was decided on a first come first serve basis. (Apparently we were first)

Then we got the case study. 7 +7 pages of words, tables and figures. The task was simple : prepare a 2000 word report. But the question that still remains a mystery to me is "Where do we start?". Not knowing the answer, we just tried to do what we could and the only thing we could to was try to extract information from the 14 pages which was, well easy. Trying to interpret the information was almost impossible as we didn't even know what we were supposed to do. Discussion time was also limited because of clashing timetables and 'other' obligations (my favourite excuse).

Several meetings later (where progress in each meeting was minimal if not non-existent), we met with the lecturer who gave us the format for our report. It seemed simple enough in theory but the problem came when we tried to prepare it, as the information which we thought was significant wasn't regarded as so by the lecturer. This was confusing. So we sat down and repeated what we did in the first meeting but this time there were 7 more pages of "useful" information. 21 pages later, still nothing. Merol, Afiq and Fara tried their best but with every new answer we got, 2 new questions arose and the 2 questions made the answer irrelevant. Especially when my favourite question was "what the hell are we supposed to do?"

Then, we saw the reason for our cluelessness. The case study was under the topic Strategic Management Accounting and it seems that we haven't reached that far in the syllabus. So when the time came, it seemed like the ray of hope we so much needed. However with that ray of hope came other problems. It was the final 2 weeks and the tests, quizzes and assignments were piling up. Afiq, Merol and Fara still tried to complete the report, but between the tests and assignments I was already maxed out and didn't want to spend my precious free time to do the report. Yes I was selfish, no excuses.

That's when 3 people did the work of 4. Afiq, Merol and Fara sacrificed a lot to complete the report while I spent my free time lazing around. It's a pity Synergy didn't get into the next round, but under better circumstances I'm sure you guys would've gotten far. Thanks for being patient with me, especially since I was an unbearable asshole when nearing the due date. For what it's worth, I'm sorry.

There were 3 group members in Synergy, and then there was me...