Announcement {In Aaron's words}

It's another round of hear about the McKell’s life from the mouth of Aaron! Caroline asked me to write about an important change that will be happening in about 7 months from now. I've been putting this post off for a couple weeks because of random school assignments and my carnal desire to sit on the couch and do nothing. But that time has passed!

It's been a couple months since this happened but at the end of last year we decided to change our direction and focus on something different. Now before we continue I need to settle some questions you may have. We are not pregnant. If you skipped down from the beginning this is no shock, but if not I hope you have learned your lesson for assuming things.

Now that I have let down hopes and dreams of quickly becoming grandparents and uncles/aunts (whether through relation or not) I am going to talk about another part of my life that I feel is very exciting: accounting!

Yep, while many of you who read this may already know, I am an accounting major and I am finishing up my masters degree this April. That means that job hunting has been a major part of my life during the past couple years. I talked to countless recruiters and staff from many of the big accounting firms. Most of my t-shirts, pens and notebooks have the logo of some accounting firm. Everyone can tell I'm an accounting student. It's almost like I'm walking around campus with a pocket protector and calculator, I think that comes after your second year on the job :).

 Caroline and I spent lots of time analyzing and praying about where we should go (I must have made 7 different excel spreadsheets trying to determine the strengths and weaknesses of each decision). Ultimately, we decided that PwC was the place for us. I spent this last summer working there as an intern in audit and I enjoyed being wined (well, I drank 7-up) and dined by going to dinners and even participating in a service outreach program in Belize.

 However, after the internship where I worked on two exciting companies, I was worried that the subject of audit wouldn't keep me as engaged as I had hoped. Even so, I accepted a full time offer in audit to begin the following year (this coming fall).

I thought that after accepting a job offer I would be "über excited" but sadly I had more of an "eh" attitude (how ungrateful of me when you really think about it). I decided to put out some feelers to recruiters to let them know I was interested in some other areas of the firm, but I felt that the ship had sailed and I would just need to apply for others departments after I begin full time employment (which would be more difficult).

Several weeks after accepting a full time position in audit, my recruiter called me and asked if I would be interested in applying for a group called "transactional services." I said yes emphatically, and was flown out for another quick trip to San Jose.

The position is more of a consulting role in which I will be helping companies with mergers and acquisitions. The accounting world can become quite complex and I look forward to providing a valuable and interesting service to hopefully many different companies in the Silicon Valley.

To be honest, I'm not sure entirely what I'll be doing but I am excited to learn. I got the job and will be starting this September as an associate in a group called CMAAS (Capital Markets & Accounting Advisory Services), which is a part of Transactional Services.

Through this experience, I learned the importance of building good relationships with everyone we meet. I had several people that I barely knew help me get the position I was interested in. Good thing my curly hair helps me be memorable :).

You're all the best, thanks for reading!
Aaron

*If you want to see the accounting/job hunt journey unfold: click here for Aaron getting into the MAcc program, here for choosing Aaron's internship, here for Aaron breaking his arm during a recruiting event, here for starting his internship, and here for Aaron's trip to Belize.  It's been a long journey but we  finally know our future and are more excited than ever!