Bridgette is a new NINJA CPA Blogger.

My background is in business. I love numbers, but debits and credits gave me a headache and there was NO way I was going into accounting so I focused on getting a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.

Then I proceeded to get a Master’s in Business Administration. I never pursued a concentration like Health Care Management or Operations. Why would I do that? Knowing something about everything has to be more lucrative than knowing a lot about one thing, right? Wrong.

I worked my tail off getting a couple of degrees to find out I’m really not qualified for anything with generalized business degrees. Added to the fact that my education significantly outweighed my work experience, I was an undesirable employee.

I signed on with several temp agencies and you will never believe what the job market needed at that very moment…accountants. I worked in accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory control, etc. I realized quickly that while I could do the jobs I couldn’t handle the monotony of accounting.

With a few years of work experience behind me I needed to rethink my career. How could I use the business background and the accounting experience without actually being an accountant? I was resistant to more schooling. Hadn’t I learned enough? Well hello, financial analysis!

Ad hoc reporting, different accounting systems, no two days are the same. And best of all—no debits and credits! This is perfect…and short lived. Accountants are still needed more.

The accounting department at my company needed assistance filling in for employees on medical leave. It’s just a couple of weeks, so no problem, I say. A couple of weeks turns into months of filling in for various employees doing bank reconciliations, general ledger accounting, journal entries, and month end close out in addition to my financial analysis responsibilities.

Then they needed someone to manage the department. Who now has the most experience with the different job functions and knows all about how the department is ran? Yep, you guessed it. It seemed the more I tried to get away from accounting, the more I wound up actually becoming a corporate accountant.

Well as most of you know, there is no progression in accounting without those 3 magical letters behind your name and those letters most certainly aren’t MBA.

My CPA journey began 3 years ago, which is miniscule in comparison to some of you, but considering I thought I was done with school when I received my MBA in 2004 these 3 years have felt like a lifetime! I may have fallen into accounting unexpectedly, but it looked like that was where I was meant to stay.

So at 31 with a 1 year old and in the first trimester of another pregnancy I hightailed it back to school AGAIN to start working on the required educational credits to become a CPA. Six semesters and another pregnancy later I’m eligible to sit for the exam. And that is where the real fun began…