Shopping therapy doesn’t come cheap

On the first night of my finance class our instructor told us how the course would go. We would have two midterms, a final and one homework assignment. I thought that sounded pretty good. I wouldn’t have to spend every night working on homework. I just needed to listen in class and study before the tests.

Well tonight we took our first midterm. [Which, really, since there are two midterms and a final, isn't it really more of a tri-term?] I spent most of the day Saturday and quite a bit of time on Sunday night studying for this tri-term. I even looked over my notes again before I left the office to head to school. I felt ready. I felt good.

Then I took the test.

There were questions I just blantantly guessed on. Not even an educated guess. Just an eeny-meeny-miney-mo guess. There were questions I chose “c” on because “c” is the most common answer, right? It was really sad.

I knew there would be question like what is the APR if Bob buys a computer for $1899.99 and makes weekly payments of $39.99 for a year. And I knew there would be questions like looking at the balance sheet above, figure the quick ratio. But she totally threw me with the what makes up net income? Umm…shit I don’t know. Nor do I care. I might care if I was a finance major. But I’m a marketing major and I don’t care.

Remember when you were in high school and you thought, why am I supposed to know this? I’ll never use this in the future. And you’re teacher always told you it was the principles behind it that you would need. We always new that was complete bullshit. I happen to know for a fact that I do not need to know what makes up net income. How do I know that? Because I’m already working. You want a project managed? I’m your girl. You want to know what makes up our net income. I’ll show you the way to the finance department.

As I walked out the door, having just handed in my test, I tried to stay positive. I said, “Self, at least you got some questions right. If you had stayed home you would have gotten a 0. But since you took the test you at least got like a 30% or something. 30% is better than 0.”

To make myself feel better, I did what every girl does when she’s feeling down. I went shopping. Only I’m not your average girl. I hate shopping. So when I go shopping I buy things like socks and peanut butter. Woo hoo. I’m a fun girl. Just to cheer myself up I bought an accordian portfolio to hold my documents for the websites I’m working on. Woah! Call in the cops because there is entirely too much fun going on here.

So I stopped at Target to pick up a few essentials. You know, like the socks and peanut butter I already mentioned. Next thing I know I’m throwing all kinds of crap in my cart. I had string cheese, pineapple in a can, a big bag of baby carrots, eggs, cinnamon swirl bread…the good stuff. I walked out of there $90 poorer. I wasn’t even in the store for an hour and I dropped $90. That bitch Target gets me every time. She lures me in with her promise of new warm, non-holey socks and next thing I know I’m throwing cash at her like she’s a stripper in Vegas.

And to make matters worse, as I was throwing stuff in to my cart I thought, You know, I’m not positive I have enough money in my checking account to cover all of this. Oh well, I’ll just use my Target card. Only I do this thing where I don’t carry my credit cards in my wallet….so I won’t use them. I remembered this when I got up to the register to pay. I was already in line at that point. Half of my stuff was on the moving belt thing. It was too late to turn back now. Luckily my debit card worked. I would have felt like such a heel with a cart full of crap and no money to pay for it.