Fourth Observation!!

Today I sat in a Federal Taxation class. The class takes place on Thursday nights in the Carl De Santis Building from 6-7:55p.m. Throughout this course, students learn how to deal report taxes. The course is taught by Dr. Michael Hoffman. This week Dr. Hoffman is discussing what is included in gross income. Gross income is the amount of income a taxpayer receives in the fiscal year.

This course only has one prerequisite, which is Intermediate Accounting I. However, the majority of the students in Intermediate I are juniors so this tax class is filled with mostly senior and junior accounting majors. The class has about 20 students. One interesting thing about this class that I noticed was the lack of discussion. Throughout the hour that I sat in there was maybe 2 or 3 questions. Either everyone in the class understood the class perfectly or they are all just shy. Another behavior I noticed was the note taking utensils. Usually students in upper level accounting courses strictly use binders and notebooks for notes but there were a few students in this class who were using their laptops to take notes.

I found this class to be rather boring compared to the previous class I observed (intermediate accounting II). After the first half hour I had to force myself to keep paying attention. The professor also does not give a break within the two hours which I found quite extreme considering the difficulty of the material.