How it Started

I realized at some point when I was young that people were right when they told me I could be anything I wanted.  Well, they were almost right...I am not a good singer and I don't have rhythm.  But I did recognize that I had the capacity to accomplish most of the things I set my mind to.  At 10, I was fairly certain that I would go into business law, because I didn't want to deal with criminals and I would never be an ambulance chaser (I read a lot of John Grisham at the time).  The only problem was that as I got older, I no longer knew what I wanted to do.  Circumstances with my family life had changed, negatively, and law school seemed out of reach.  I was admittedly lost for a while. 

However, I am extremely stubborn and contrary: I like to prove people wrong.  When I was a screw up in high school, and then afterwards as I sort of floated around and partied, people began to think that I wasn't going to amount to much more than a party girl.  So I dumped my friends and started college and I made sure that I had a 4.0 GPA.  The problem then was, I still didn't know what I wanted to be.  I was still interested in the idea of going into business, and teaching also seemed attractive because I would have summers off. 

I had started working in accounting after I got promoted from customer service.  My then boss and mentor, while acknowledging that I was adept at what I did, stated that he just didn't think I was cut-out to be an accountant. He even set up meetings between him and his lawyer friends to try and sway me away from accounting.

Because I read, "you wouldn't be a good accountant," when I should have read, "why would anyone want to be an accountant," I got my bachelor's and then my master's in accounting.  So now I'm working for a Big 4 accounting firm.  I'm getting ready to take the CPA exam, and all I can think is, "Why the eff am I an accountant?"  I still want summers off.  I'm more interested in having free time to do fun things, than in working 4 busy seasons a year and not having a weekend four months of the year, at least.  So that is where I am now, and this is how it started.