Ego Beatitidinis is Finis

I have decided to move over to WordPress for all future blogging!  Here is the link to the new blog if you're interested: click here.

Whitworth University 2016 Graduation Commencement!

It has officially been one full week since my graduation commencement ceremony from Whitworth University!  Unfortunately for me, I dropped my phone kinda funny and didn't realize in time that the auto focus was momentarily compromised for my pictures.  No matter - I just banged the corner of my iPhone against a railing and that has since been fixed!

I graduated last Sunday with a bachelor of arts in accounting and a minor in philosophy.  I took many elective classes (mostly yoga and Pilates with a dash of Financial Statement Analysis that almost drove me insane) so that I could graduate with 150 credits after four arduous years!  150 credits is not the required amount for an accounting degree.  It is, however, the required amount for me to be eligible to sit for the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exams.  I ordered the textbooks and review package from Becker, as that is what Moss Adams has stated they will cover for their employees - a $3.3k value.  I truly feel lucky, blessed, and happy that I have landed such an opportunity with a reputable firm.  Now, I will be spending my next seven months working part-time to save for my Seattle apartment rent and furniture as well as studying and taking the CPA exams.  On average, it takes 974 hours of studying to pass all four exams.  Keep your fingers crossed that I be lucky and studious enough to get at least three passed and out of the way before 2017!  Cross your fingers harder that I pass all four before 2017 because they are officially adding a fifth exam in 2017!

The day before graduation: getting letters as the seniors of the Whitworth Cheer Team with Coach!

From left to right: my Uncle David, my Aunt Anna, my little sister Anna, my dad, myself, and my mom!

My grad cap design!  It reads, "Though she be but little, she is fierce.  150 Credits Later..."

Me and a good friend of mine, Nick!  He's a fellow accounting major/degree possessor, and has been my classmate and friend since freshman year!  He also lived in the same dorm as I did our freshman year!

My friend, Conner, and I!  I met him at the end of our freshman year.  I got a photo with him before the commencement ceremony began.

Snapshot of me right before I ascended the stage!

My friend, Nick, and I!  He's Conner's housemate and has been for the past two years.  He is a sassy and witty English degree!

My lovely friend, Julianne!  I met her in the middle of freshman year!  She is going on to med school in Atlanta - which gives us both excuses to take big trips!

Holli with Julianne and I!  Holli was my first best friend in college!  She also has an English degree, and she introduced me to Julianne.

Kaysee and I!  Love this girl so much, and I'm happy to say that she plans on staying in the state of Washington!

My sophomore year roommate, Emily!  She roomed with Holli and I our sophomore year.  She transferred into Whitworth and graduated last year.  She will be a teacher in Alaska!

An out-of-focus photo of our dinner at Mizuna!  Great restaurant, especially for those with vegan and vegetarian diets.

Spring Senior Self-Portraiture

These are a few weeks late in coming as I have been busy wrapping things up for my senior year of college!  These were shot by my friend, Shannon, and he found this park near Whitworth's campus that proved to be a gorgeous location!  My dress is an Eliza J floral pleated chiffon maxi dress that I absolutely adore.

End of Term Reflection Ramble

The other night, I proctored an exam for a professor to get some extra hours on my internship credits (the internship ended early and I needed to do extra stuff around campus to cover the remaining hours required for credit).  She needed me to cover for her while she attended her daughter's orchestra concert.  Her daughter only performs twice a year and she had already missed the first one.  All I had to do was hand out the exams, ensure no one cheated, collect the completed exams, and then turn them into her office box - so it was not absolutely crucial that she be there herself.  She's good about writing up exams that don't contain test errors/discrepancies or confusing terminology, so I wasn't worried about people coming up to me trying to ask questions.

I was a little nervous myself actually, even though I didn't have to take the exam or do anything.  I suppose I was afraid I might have to call out someone for cheating or something.  I was shaking while I handed out the exam papers, which I did not understand about myself.  I still don't, heh.  Oh well.

Anyway, it was interesting to watch various students handle the exam.  I wasn't watching them the whole time.  I was glancing over the class every so often between YouTube videos.  I was watching videos because the night class is three hours.  One student prayed for about fifteen seconds before picking up her pencil.  Several students turned red in the face as they read through the exam with worry on their faces.  One student, who's known for having a few strange social habits (by strange, I mean unusual - he's not mean or overly bizarre), got angry as he was sitting in the front row.  He had his jaw clenched while he slowly and angrily made a fist on the desk.  I'm not sure if he was mad at the professor over some element of the exam or mad at himself for maybe forgetting to study something.  I also saw a student who was red in the face pick his nose too, which made go right back to watching YouTube.  I was two seconds from issuing a warning about keeping eyes on your own paper after staring down a student who glanced at his neighbors exam for about five seconds.  I understand super brief side glances at your neighbor's exam just to see how far along they are compared to you, but this guy was staring way too long.  He caught me giving him a glare, and didn't look at his neighbor's exam the rest of the time.  He kept looking up at me though, kind of like a punished puppy.

I suppose I'm typing this up because I have only one of two exams left to do for my last semester at Whitworth University, and it's a super easy yoga vocabulary exam.  The other one was for my Accounting Systems and Theory exam and I spent all day yesterday completing it.  Now, I'm just selling off a few items that I don't want to worry about taking home with me in my car like some cheap framed paintings, my mini-fridge, a full-length mirror, and some other stuff.  The residence halls will have taped off designated donation areas next week.  I might drop some stuff off there just to be rid of them.  I really like spring cleaning like this and just not having a lot of stuff.
I got new senior photos taken that I will print off to send as graduation announcements.  Once the photographer is done going through and editing them, I will share them here with a link to his page.  he let me look at the raw images and he took a lot of good photos of me!  I was very surprised and very pleased.  I would have been content taking them as is but since he's running a bit of a business and likes his photography a certain way, I didn't ask to have them unedited.

It still hasn't really hit me yet that I am graduating and will have seven months of little to no obligation to anything.  I suppose I could spend these next seven months taking the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exams and attempt to complete and pass them before 2017.  That would be super ideal, since they will be adding a fifth exam for certification in 2017.  I would also have them all out of the way before I even start my new position, and be given a $5,000 bonus for having passed all of them before having been employed by Moss Adams for a year.  Even if I don't complete the current required four exams over the next seven months, it will be good to get even a few of them completed with passing results before I start.  Gosh, I just don't want to study anymore though!  Motivation is hard, even now.

Fall Self-Portraiture for Senior Year

These photos were taken a few weeks ago, but I thought I'd add them to the blog to showcase my fondness for the vivid red autumn leaf color and my senior photos for college!

This is the one I submitted to the yearbook for my senior photo.

Trek and Travel - Moss Adams: The Next Chapter

This past Monday evening, I stayed at the Hotel Monaco in Seattle, Washington.  The king room of this four-star hotel booked for me was paid for by the regional accounting firm, Moss Adams, LLP.  It features a king-sized bed in a 300 square foot room with a 42-inch LG flat screen TV, a desk and chair, closet with cheetah-print robe and iron and ironing board, and a full bathroom.  And a very long hallway!  Very swanky room. My room at Hotel Monaco was on the 7th floor facing 4th Avenue.

A few blocks away is the Moss Adams firm in the Wells Fargo building on the 28th floor.  I went there for interviews starting at 8:30 am on Tuesday morning.  There were many candidates there, about 20-25 I want to say.  We each varied in the positions we were vying for: internships, tax staff, audit staff.  We ranged from college juniors going after internships as well as college seniors and graduate school students seeking out full-time positions in audit or tax.  I was personally seeking out a tax position, but was open to an audit position as well if the professionals felt it was better suiting.

The central structure is the Wells Fargo building in Seattle.  Moss Adams LLP is currently located on the 28th floor.

They paired up the candidates with a pair of professionals.  The professionals were one from audit and one from tax.  I was paired up with a candidate named Steven from Arizona, who was attending graduate school and was in Seattle for the week conducting various interviews for a position in audit.  We four walked over to a coffeeshop called Pegasus Coffee, which is apparently Seattle's oldest coffee bar.  Our interviews here were very casual.  We mostly learned about the two professionals' perspectives on the culture of the Seattle firm.  They did get to hear about mine and Steven's previous work experience though.  And the coffee was very good.

After we finished up our coffees, we walked back to the Moss Adams firm to have our formal interviews conducted.  Two professionals interviewed us.  They were different ones, and the interview was one-on-one.  The first professional interviewing me was hard for me to read.  He has a good poker face.  We talked at length about providing quality service and about my previous work experiences as a tax intern at Fruci and Associates, PS and as a front desk agent at a Holiday Inn Express and Suites.  The second professional was very friendly and smiley, and we talked at length about being busy-bodies and not liking to be idle.  We also talked a lot about volunteer service, especially about my past trip to Jamaica over my spring break.

After that, we candidates were all dismissed for our lunch breaks.  We reconvened at the Columbia Center tower on the 75th floor for schmoozing and for a last chance to impress more of the firm's professionals.  A tax partner found me (it almost seemed like he was looking for me) and spoke to me for about twenty-five minutes about how suitable the tax profession would be for me.  I was trying to stay humble and talk about how I know I already like doing tax work but that I am still open to audit should the firm hire me.  But the amount of time and effort he took for convincing me to tax made me feel really good about possibly being accepted for a full-time position.  He soon said he had to get going, and he gave me his business card before he left the building.  I'm not sure if he spoke to many other candidates while he was there!  Later on, the female professional from the formal interview found me and we chatted some more.  I told her about a serious cheer accident I had two years ago involving an uncaught back tuck basket right before mid-terms week.  She was fairly impressed I was alive!  Later on, I was in a circle of two professionals and two other candidates chatting about the possibility of Moss Adams expanding to the East Coast.  One was a SALT partner (a State And Local Tax partner) and the other professional was an audit partner.  I noticed that the SALT partner would hold longer eye contact with me over the other two candidates.  I barely got to input into the conversation (I was getting hungry and drowsy), but I was also trying to keep myself from over-analyzing.  Soon, the social was declared over.  The SALT partner was finishing up a conversation with one of the other candidates, shook the guy's hand, turned to me and shook my hand, and then offered me his business card.  He did not offer it to the other two candidates standing right there.

The tall black building in the center is the Columbia Center tower.  It is 76 stories high and is currently the largest structure in the Seattle cityscape.

After that, I hung out with my boyfriend at his house on Capitol Hill, changed out of my business suit, and watched Parks and Rec on Netflix.  Soon, it was time to depart to the Sea-Tac International Airport and take a 10:05 pm Alaska Airlines flight back to Spokane so I could resume my classes with the rest of the student body of Whitworth University.
Last night while I was working at the college cafeteria, I missed a call and received a voicemail from a different tax partner whom I have not yet met.  She stated that she wanted to touch bases with me about my candidacy for Moss Adams.  She also sent me an email restating her voicemail and also saying that she can take my return phone call until 7:30 pm that night.  I did not get off work until 8:16 pm, unfortunately for me!  I was so stressed out!  I could not tell from the tone of her voice if she was going to bring me good or bad news.  I tried to reason with myself - surely, she would have just emailed me if the firm decided to decline me.  They would not waste their time with phone calls and voicemails just to reject me, right?  But I also did not want to get my hopes up, just in case.  I took a shower when I got back to my room and played music on my phone.  And then I dropped my phone in the shower and the shower stream water got behind my screen, rendering my touch screen iPhone 5S completely useless.  I have listened to music in the shower nearly every night since I have been at Whitworth - WHY did it have fall over at this time!?
I was in a panic!  How could I call back the partner and hear back about my candidacy?  Luckily, I have been a lot better with my finances this year than in previous years.  I asked my suitemate if I could borrow her car to jet to Walmart to purchase a new prepaid phone.  I got the LG Lucky with StraightTalk for only $30.  It's a touch screen phone too.  But it definitely does not compare to the iPhone.

Today, I called the partner back at 10:59 am.  She was just exiting a conference.  She told me that the Moss Adams CPAs I interviewed with were extremely impressed with me and that Moss Adams would like to offer me a full-time position in tax.


I am one of Moss Adams LLP's newest tax staff hires in their Seattle office!  My start date will be in January 2017.  This is my dream job.  I have been vying for Moss Adams ever since an acquaintance of mine told me about his recruitment process for an internship with them during my freshman year.  Now, I am among their ranks and I could not be more excited to begin work!

21st Birthday Festivities

This post is a little late coming, but here are a few photos of my 21st birthday from July 15!  We hit up about five bars total in downtown Spokane.  Luckily, all of my drinks were bought for me!  I started off with an all-male party, but then my lady friend, Aleigha, came and joined us!