The events that shaped the changes of 2015 started well before the beginning of 2015 but that’s when everything came to a head.
December, 2014, right before Christmas … one of the parents of a student that lived in the dorm at the school I worked at called me screaming. Her daughter arrived home for the Christmas holiday and said she hated our school and wasn’t coming back after New Year’s (a commonly expressed feeling by our students since they all had severe behavioral and mental health issues and hate that they ended up at that school.) Anyway, the reason the mother was screaming at me? Because I allowed the child to come spend Christmas with her family without telling the mother that her daughter didn’t want to come back and if she’d have known that she would have never have allowed her to come home for Christmas. I listened, apologized profusely, and offered to come get the girl. Luckily the mother agreed that the girl could stay through New Year’s as originally planned… I promised that I would be there to bring the student back after that if she refused to get on the van.
January 6, 2015. The last straw. An IEP meeting for the same student. The mother, who never took any responsibility for the student, joined on the phone with a list of demands. The county joined the phone conference as well and informed me that none of the paperwork was being accepted. I snapped at the mother. Afterward, my boss (who I normally really adored) reprimanded me for my obvious attitude. Essentially I should have fawned all over the mother for trying and doing the best that she could.
At this same time I was participating in counseling through the Employee Assistance Program (6 sessions is more than enough for the stress that came with that job — sarcasm dripping) where the counselor was shocked at the situations at work I described… I started to examine what I wanted from my job and these were the two instances that really stand out as examples of what I didn’t want.
So I went back to school. I decided to get the Masters in Accounting that I had started but not finished in 1998/99. I chose WGU for a number of reasons… I could start within a month, I could work at my own pace, it is regionally accredited, and nonprofit.
In June I got a placement through Accountemps with a large, successful company as a cost accountant. It was scary leaving a full-time job for a temp position but as unhappy as I’d become at the job, the chance to change my future made it an easy choice. Six months later, I’m still there and loving it.
I finished my degree this month so now I have two Masters degrees… (I think I’m done with school for a bit)
So, after leaving accounting in 1999, working as a network engineer from 1999 to 2006, then going to school and working in education from 2006 to 2015, I’ve come full circle.
TL;DR: 2015 was a pretty awesome year. I’m back working as an accountant after 16 years of other careers, some good, some bad…