The purpose of this blog is to allow myself the chance to continue my academic pursuits of accounting while I study for certification exams and pursue gainful employment in the field.
I laughed when my friend, Bernie, suggested I start a blog. I had graduated and was looking for work. I commented to him over a snifter of brandy the difficulty of my position. I came to accounting late in my scholastic career. I had pursued other academic endeavors before I ended up in the business school. I actually only picked accounting as a major because they said it was the hardest major they had. I discovered not only was I quite good at the subject but I found myself really enjoying it. Accounting had the rules and structure of the sciences with the human element I enjoyed in the social sciences.
I hit a road block when I realized that accounting firms looked for cookie cutter candidates. They take at first look at nineteen year old students in their sophomore year at a weekend seminar. Then they weed down their choices to juniors who intern over the summer. And pick who will come back the following year.
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| I act old enough to remember these signs. |
While I looked great on paper and interviewed well. I was passed up for younger students, who were probably more malleable future accountants. Each year the disparity between my age and my competition grew. I was the top students in my class but I saw firms choosing the C average, twenty year old students.
So back to the conversation over brandy, I was asking Bernie for advice on how to look younger, when he came back with an idea: embrace my experience. I had a wealth of knowledge in both the field of accounting and outside of it. I found loopholes in GAAP that even surprised my professors. There was no way to fit that breadth of knowledge into a résumé or elevator pitch, so start a blog. I politely went along with his seemingly absurd idea until I realized that it would be doubtful I would get many other chances to share this knowledge and continue my pursuits outside of academia.
Acknowledgements
First of, to my best friend Bernie for coming up with the idea. A friend and co-conspirator for over a decade, this has to be his best idea that does not involve invading small islands or impersonating dignitaries. He gave me the idea around 4 months ago, and made sure I didn't quit on the idea.
Secondly I wanted to thank my girlfriend and by proxy the game developers KingsIsle Entertainment for coming up with the title for this blog. After I got writing and really saw this project coming to fruition. I hit a brick wall in the form of actually naming the blog. Every single accounting term and derivation of said term has been purchased by speculators in hopes that some sap like me is planning on writing a blog and needs a domain name. When I turned to my girlfriend she came up with this name on the first try.
She recalled the pun from when we were blowing off steam during our college years by playing online MMORPGs that were designed for middle school students, not for college students. As such, to prevent profanity, only certain words were allowed to be used in the public chat feature. And apparently accountant and was considered a curse word by these programmers. To get around it I would always type "A Count Aunt" (strangely on this game ant was also too profane of a word)
