Hi, I’m Jaanki Jeevan, a traditional MPA student in the Financial Reporting and Assurance track. I will be graduating this December (yes..almost done). I’m an international student from Mumbai, India (the other side of the world). I’m here as a guest blogger to share my recent experiences at a summit in Orlando, FL which focused on lean accounting. The ideas presented were very interesting and thought provoking and I’m eager to share them with you! So stay tuned for more…
Category Archives: Career
recruiting, internship, professional development, career workshops and events
From Austin to Boston
Keri Ledezma, MPA admissions manager extraordinaire, e-mailed me a few days ago to see if I was still planning to blog from afar now that I’ve graduated and moved to Boston. It was REALLY good to hear from her! It seems like forever since my wife, Janssen, and I packed our things and moved across the country. In reality, it has been less than two months, but I’m not ashamed to say that I miss Texas! I miss Texas friends, Texas football, Texas teachers and staff and Texas weather!
So it was good to hear from Keri, and I assured her that I’d be checking in every so often to blog about my post-MPA life as a new associate auditor at one of the ‘Big 4’ accounting firms in downtown Boston.
Life as an Auditor
I’ve been really happy with life as an auditor so far (the photo above is taken from a conference room I was working in last week). My coworkers are all smart, interesting people, and there’s no end to the learning resources that my firm provides. After a good amount of training, we’ve all been deployed on various engagement teams working in and outside of Boston.
My first auditing experience was actually in Wisconsin, and coincidentally, Janssen’s dad is originally from Beloit, Wisconsin. So instead of flying me home for the weekend, the firm paid to fly Janssen out to visit. What a great policy that is! It saved the firm money (J’s flight out and back was less than mine would have been), and allowed us to have a vacation sort of weekend (there’s a link there because Janssen posted a bunch of photos from the trip on her blog a couple of weeks ago).
The client was great to work with, my team was awesome, and besides the fact that I ate less healthily than usual–going out to dinner every night–it was an ideal beginning to my auditing career. Each of my team members, including myself, even brought home some genuine Wisconsin cheese to our respective significant others and family members.
Two other things I should mention before letting you go:
1) I recently learned that my summer CPA studying paid off when I received my passing score for the fourth and final section of the CPA exam! What a relief that is! Now I just need to rack up 1000 auditing hours to become a licensed CPA in the state of Massachusetts.
BTW, I highly recommend taking the CPA exam before you start working full time if you can. Why? You won’t want to study after a full day’s work. It’s unbelievably nice to have it out of the way up front so I can focus on what is already a steep learning curve becoming an auditor.
and
2) Another unbelievably nice thing? Making money again. Also highly recommended.
Just the Start
As I look back on everything that has happened to me during the past months, I can only remember what Jim Franklin, director of the MPA program, said at orientation: Even though “What starts here changes the world” might seem only a good marketing slogan, in this class there are 95 people who hopefully will have leading positions at important companies and this definitely can make a difference.”
Almost three months have gone by since I started this experience, and it all seems to have happened yesterday. I started my MPA during the second summer session, so I’ve been in Texas since the first days of July. My summer classes (Fraud Examination and Legal Environment of Business) went by as fast as lightning. It seems like it was yesterday when I was learning to use the UT shuttle and looking for my classrooms. During this time I believe I have checked my resume 15 times – seriously.
Today, I am planning my schedule for the next week and I am really nervous because I’ll have my first Intermediate exam and two interviews (my first ones here). I have been thinking about preparing for interviews since I got here, but even with that, it doesn’t seem real that in a couple of days I’ll be sitting right in front of an interviewer.
Last Friday, I went to a MPA International Connection (MIC) meeting, where we talked about interview tips, and at the beginning someone asked us how we were. A friend and I agreed that so much is happening and we feel that we can’t even “process” something when another thing comes up. Right now, I am starting to think that writing here will really help me reflect upon what I am doing.
To me, everything is happening so fast. The good thing is, I am enjoying every second of it. After all, what started here is really changing my world.
Summer School
Last year at this time I was halfway through my first term as an MPA student at The University of Texas. It’s a little unreal to see some of the incoming MPA class in that same situation now. Next month they’ll have their first career fair. It all happens so fast and is, in my opinion, quite a fun ride. For any of them reading, good luck!
It’s even more unreal to me that in less than three weeks I’ll be done with my master’s degree in accounting, I’ll have taken (and hopefully passed) all four sections of the CPA exam (finished the last Becker video lecture just this morning!), and I’ll have just arrived with Janssen in Boston to move into the great little apartment she found for us. And when I say “little,” I mean it. We have to get rid of several pieces of furniture just to fit in there.
Taking classes during the summer is great, by the way. It’s hot and beautiful outside, and really cool inside (I’ve resorted to packing a sweater in my bag–no kidding). And somehow, despite the fast pace of the classes, summer feels more laid back than other semesters. That might also have something to do with my only taking 9 credits Summer compared with 13 and 15 during Fall and Spring. Not to mention the demands of recruiting season during Fall semester.
In other news, I’ve been asked to continue blogging after graduation to give students an idea of what the first year as an auditor is like for me. It’ll be fun to stay in touch with UT that way and to blog of my experiences in Boston. As always, feel free to leave comments with questions, thoughts, etc. I’ll update every month or two. Until next time!
Video Interview
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