Dear Everyone
Merry Christmas! (Or ‘Season’s Greetings!’ to my non-Christian friends) It’s that time of year again and time for my annual Christmas e-mail. Yes, I am still too lazy to collect your addresses and send cards. For those of you who really aren’t interested please find a summary of my year below.
I got a job. I lost my job. I got another job.
Intrigued? Read on below.
Anyone still reading? Okay then, let’s get started. Casting my mind back to January 2010 I was working part time and was right in the middle of the graduate job hunt facing the same experience as so many others of watching the rejections pile up and my options dwindle. Things began to look up in February after what felt like a good performance at the Audit Commission assessment centre. By March I had been offered a job starting in September. I breathed a sigh of relief and decided to enjoy what would be my last summer of freedom without the responsibility of a ‘gown up’ job.
That whole idea came crashing spectacularly down on Friday 13th August. ‘Have you seen the news today?’ my Step Dad asked as he came in the door that evening. ‘No, oh god, has my holiday company gone bust?’ I asked. ‘No, the Audit Commission has been abolished’. A week of anxiety followed as the Audit Commission debated their future and decided what to do with the 80 odd graduates they had starting in September. The call finally came while I was lying on a beach in Ibiza. They had decided that they were not going to be able to honour our offers of employment. I was obviously pretty upset about this and found myself in tears while an impromptu party erupted around me on our boat back from the beach complete with a CD on repeat, a man playing a conch shell and containers of sangria that would have looked more at home in a chemistry lab.
So it was back to the graduate job hunt for me. Having once secured a graduate job in audit I decided to stick with the same theme. I was pretty dismayed when the rejections started coming in again. I was starting to run out of options when an invitation came through to attend an assessment centre with *. Having already been rejected by some much less prestigious accountancy firms I was not feeling all that confident about it but off I headed to London anyway. I had my assessment centre on the Wednesday, I was offered a job in Public Sector Audit on the Friday and I started on the following Monday. I needed somewhere to live quick sharp so my Grand Mother who lives in a commuter area found herself with a lodger. I’ve not really done that much work yet having spent a large amount of time studying for my first round of exams but I have enjoyed the work I have done so far.
It’s funny how some of the seemingly most important decisions in life happen almost entirely by accident but somehow it works out. If you believe in that kind of thing you could call it fate. I had the time of my life at Essex University. Yet up until June of that year I was bound for Nottingham until a sudden late night realisation that my future did not lie in Biological Science and many frantic calls to UCAS ended with me picking at random from the few universities that still had spaces for politics, it was an election year, and rolling up in October to a place I had never even visited. And so it is with my career. I certainly never saw myself training as an accountant or a calculator becoming a permanent feature in my handbag! I was sure that my career path would start in a public sector organisation. Instead I find myself working in London in something of a corporate suit environment albeit with public sector clients. But that is the way it has turned out and I’m enjoying it so far. I’ve not been there long but I feel * is a good fit for me currently. I finally have a ‘grown up’ job. This was confirmed by the arrival of my pension information this morning.
So December sees me training to be an accountant and living with my Grand Mother. Luckily I have never been cool or I might see my life less positively than I currently do. I have little idea what the next year will hold, except a whole load more accountancy exams (providing I passed the last round. If I didn’t I will yet again find myself without a job so please keep your collective fingers crossed for me) but I’ll be sure to tell you about it next year.
Catherine x
p.s. Festive pictures of icy berry and dear in snow were actually taken last December. I am now one of those ‘time poor’ people.
No comments:
Post a Comment