Paying the rent in accounting

One of my biggest fears is being cold called by a professor and looking like a complete idiot because I don’t know the answer to the question. To mitigate the risk of this happening, I began perfecting a technique I call “paying the rent.”  This technique involves me volunteering to answer some of the easier questions during class discussion in the hopes that when we get to the harder questions, the professor will call on other students instead.

 

This technique worked well during Mod II when I had two classes that involved cold calling but I was beginning to have some concerns about this Mod because of my accounting professor’s reputation for being an aggressive cold caller. I did my best to “pay the rent” in accounting but this morning my accounting professor called on me to answer a question I wasn’t quite prepared to answer. We were discussing a case involving a liquor distributor that my professor wrote in 1995. I read the case last night but did not understand it completely. When my professor asked for someone to give a three sentence synopsis of the case, I must have had one of those “deer in the headlights look” because the minute we made eye contact he called on me. He said “explain the case to me in three sentences, make it real simple.” I decided to do what most people do when they failed to pay the rent, I stalled for time.

 

I said “I can’t make it simple, it’s quite complicated.” His response was “how would you explain it to your grandmother.” A grin immediately began forming on the corners of my face and without missing a beat, I said “in Chinese.”

 

The entire class erupted into laughter, some classmates even began applauding. The laughter must have lasted at least 20 seconds because it gave me enough time to flip through my notes and read over my highlights. In the end, I managed to give an answer that was satisfactory enough for the professor to call on someone else to fill in what I had missed.