I’ve now been working at a Big 4 firm longer than the time it took me to obtain my MPA at UT.  I was a tradional MPA student from July of 2008 to August of 2009, and I started as an auditor that same month, which makes about 14 months on the job now.

Some of the most memorable parts of the last year are the after-work or non-audit things I did, such as busy season trivia with my team (topics ranged from Boston sports teams to Jersey Shore, and I admit, I did not excel at the latter), scraping off the windshields of my coworkers’ cars one snowy evening before they came outside, eating out at Benihana’s for my first solo dinner that could be expensed while traveling, eating out at a nice steak house in the Mall of America (another snowy evening, come to think of it), bowling with coworkers across the street from Fenway Park, discussing accounting career paths with an accounting student I met on the plane from Boston to Milwaukee, listening to a variety of excellent books on CD while making my commute to different clients around Boston, getting a guided tour of downtown Santa Fe from the Controller of our audit client, and listening for the first time to my baby’s heart beat over the phone, thousands of miles away, when my wife called from the doctor’s office during her 16-week visit.

My second year began with a transfer back to Texas, which means I won’t have as many snowy/wintry memories next year at this time.  And more significant to us, my wife and I welcomed our first baby (see the photo of the little longhorn, below) into the world in July.  So it’s the three of us, back in Texas, and loving life.  I told my wife the other day that it’s a good feeling to know that the grass just doesn’t look greener on the other side.