By Vacharish Chanasit, BBA#17

On the afternoon of April 30, 2009, the entire class of first year students gathered to attend the second orientation of their BBA life: the academic orientation.

The academic orientation is a three-hour information session, designed to provide a clearer picture to help first year students choose their majors.  Speakers included lecturers, graduates, and seniors. Lecturers provided us with a broad outlook of each major. Graduates reinforced the picture with tangible experiences of how their majors had affected their life after university. Lastly, seniors offered very recent information: what they had gone through in the past few years after they had made their decision.

A lot of students entered the room with some sort of image they associate with each major. Some of these perceptions were to be refuted and some reinforced.

The orientation started off with Ajarn Prasart Jongjaroenkamol, an accounting professor and a BBA graduate himself. He introduced accounting as the language of business, and the foundation of all other business disciplines. He disproved various myths regarding accounting, including the common perception, or perhaps misconception, that accounting is boring, stressful, and highly mathematical. The upper classmen and graduates emphasized the strong points of high employment rate and the use of systematic thinking.