How I Overcame Failures and Qualified as a Chartered Accountant

Today I am sharing the journey of Alka Mittal from Raigarh, Chhattisgarh (India).

She is currently working in a reputed Chartered Accountant Firm in Raigarh (India).

Her journey will inspire to - Never Give Up.

You can connect to her - Here. In the name segment pls mention Alka and we will share her details.

 Note: Chartered Accountancy Exam from ICAI consists of 3 levels – CPT (1st level), IPC (2nd level) and CA Final (last level exam).

One also has to complete 3 years of articleship/internship from a Chartered Accounting Firm to gain practical knowledge.

MY JOURNEY

CA - These two words changed my life.

My journey to becoming a Chartered Accountant involved a lot of hard work and dedication.

I am Alka Mittal a qualified Chartered Accountant from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

I studied in Hindi medium while in school.

I was a very bright child and scored 92% in class 10 and 87% in class 12.

After class 12, I was clueless as what should I pursue further.

During the same time, a friend of mine was going to Raipur (a nearby city) to give the CPT Exam (1st level CA exam from ICAI).

Now for me to consider CPT meant I was about to pursue Chartered Accountancy.

But here comes the twist - I was a Science student, that is after class 10 I chose Science and not Commerce.

So that meant I had no idea about Debit, Credit and all the Accounting terms.

CPT JOURNEY

While I was not sure about Chartered Accountancy, my Father suggested me to give CPT exams a try.

I said yes but I had no idea what is CA and what will be syllabus, exams and all.

I remember the first day of CPT class where the Professor started the Accounts lecture stating – Since you all know basics of Accounts this will be easy!

And in my head I was like – OMG I know nothing.

I had only 2 months to prepare for the CPT exam.

I clearly remember wanting to skip the June attempt and go for the December attempt (CPT exams are conducted twice a year – June and Dec).

But something inside of me insisted I just give the June attempt and not postpone to the December attempt.

A few days later a friend of mine agreed to teach me basics in Accounting.

And after 2 months of hard work, I cleared my CPT Exam in my 1st attempt.

Now after clearing CPT in the 1st attempt in spite of being a Hindi medium student and a student from a Science background I was proud of myself.

Now qualifying as a Chartered Accountant was my goal, my dream, my everything.

CA IPC JOURNEY

Then came CA IPCC (2nd level CA exam from ICAI).

I again gave my best and cleared my IPCC in the first attempt.

After I cleared IPCC I started with my articleship and life was great.

Now I had just one more exam to clear - CA Final and then I would be a qualified Chartered Accountant.

I was so close to my dream.

CA FINAL JOURNEY

Now because I cleared CPT, IPCC in the 1st attempt I was very confident about clearing CA FINAL also in the 1st attempt.

But I struggled to clear my CA Final Exams.

Many of my friends cleared CA FINAL but I could not clear the same after appearing several times.

I just kept failing.

My parents could not believe that their 'Super bright daughter' kept failing!

They always had so much faith in my abilities that this proved to be a shocker.

Funny but true my Mother took my Kundali to every Pundit and asked them as to why I kept failing and they all said – Rahu Chal Raha Hain (in simple words it meant - my time was not good, some bad luck!).

But I just knew one thing – I have to qualify as a Chartered Accountant and the only way was to WORK HARD and have a NEVER GIVE UP ATTITUDE.

I continued pushing and staying positive and guess what – I cleared my exams and qualified as a Chartered Accountant on 20th July 2018.

I took more than 3 attempts to clear CA Final but it was all worth it.

Finally, I proved to myself and to others around me – THAT EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

MY ADVICE TO ALL

• Even if you are super bright as a kid, stood first in school etc you can still fail in CA Exams. And if this ever happens IT IS OKAY!!! Do not freak out and just keep pushing.
• When the Pundit told me about my bad luck I felt very demotivated and even thought for a while that Chartered Accountancy may not be my cup of tea. However, then I motivated myself and stopped talking to everyone (as it was so much negativity) and proved myself by studying all over again.
• There are many ways to do a single thing if something goes wrong. Don’t feel sad try another way, correct yourself and proceed. - she concluded.