Starting off on the right foot

In my experience, there are few more exhilarating experiences than a person’s first day at a new job.  I’ve had the pleasure of personally experiencing this eight times now with five different jobs, and today was one of those days, although it was different from the rest.  In the past, I have worked temporary jobs that were stopgaps to pass time (my first job at an ice cream shop), full-time internships (the past four summers at a telecom company), and experience builders (grading papers for one of my professors and tutoring at Harding).  None of these matched the nerves inside me today as I ostensibly began my career in accounting at a local food distribution company.

I thought this post might be about Muse, the #9 band on my top 10 list, or perhaps my first week of grad school, which was also quite an experience.  Still, there’s nothing like a new job to get the engine running, especially when it marks such a distinct transition in my life.  I could have done a number of things this fall: focus entirely on my studies, drop grad school altogether and put all my effort into the job search, or do a little of both while hanging on at my summer job as long as possible.  I ended up getting a full-time offer a lot sooner than I expected, and last week, I managed to tie up all the loose ends on all of these ventures, so this fall, I’ll be both a grad student and a full-time worker in my field of study.

I may not have as much time this fall for myself as I’ve had in the past, which will probably mean sparse updates on the old web site.  Life will become a balancing act just trying to deal with homework and work-work for the next two years or so, but I pray that it will all be worthwhile in the end.  I’ll be getting some great experience in the private sector while advancing my education, which has always been a goal of mine.

I don’t know if I’ll be a teacher, a controller, a firm partner, a business owner, or all of the above in the next 40 years.  I’m sure I will always be pursuing a number of goals, no matter what my job title says I do.