It feels a little unreal how long it has been. Days really do just pass without you thinking too much about it, and suddenly its half a decade with few days I recall vividly and the rest blurred into seasons of adrenaline rush, deadlines, and functioning on too little sleep (and then getting too much sleep in attempts to compensate the sleep debt - my personal record is 16 hours, happened early this year). 

Public accounting / audit has its reputation (cues @thebig4accountant on insta), and while a lot of it is true, there is a lot of good that I am so grateful for. 

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I always say that the best thing about audit is the people, and 5 years later I still hold it true. 

I believe you see the person as they are most when they are at the height of emotions, and there’s only so much you can be indifferent about when you see the people you work with for up to 20 hours a day. But the bright side of it is that, it is proved that if you spend enough of time with people, you will find things to love about them (you also will find quirks you irk at but will be able to forgo quickly). 

My favourite part of audit is realizing how human the people you work with are.

It’s all in the little things: finding everything funny in the wee hours, being afraid of the dark at 2 in the morning, realizing they only eat rice with soups but not sauces and the extend they’d go to for bubble tea. It’s being there when they’re meeting a new person or when they had their heart broken (bc work doesn’t care what state your relationship is in), it’s being there on the random occasion where they sell their car or decide to take a chance in a different country, it’s karaoke until you lose your voices at 4am to cheer up a friend and meeting again at 8am to crunch numbers. It’s watching how chaotic they are drunk and amenable sober and loving it all.

It’s all of that, and more. 

I have had friends outside of audit who told me they can’t imagine being friends with their colleagues, and I can’t imagine not. How much joy it has been to have met so many people I grow to genuinely care about. 

Even with the small handful I wouldn’t volunteer to spend too much time with, I can’t think of anyone I never laughed with - and that is enough for me. 

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Then there’s personal growth. 

With the limited amount of time you have left on hand after taking away those spent working, you’d have no choice but to pick and choose the things you wanted to do, and honestly weigh out what was most and least important to you.

While I love days where I could have no care in the world and lived like I stay in a tiny time capsule, I’d like to think that having time in scarcity forced me be more self-aware and conscious about what (and who) I spend the limited resources of time on. And as time passed and as the parts of my life that were not truly important were shaved away, I was able to see my core values little clearer and build myself a little better (I am however still working on learning how to keeping my short-term and longer-term self happy, but a step closer is a step closer I reckon). 

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(And of course there’s the lot of good on things like exposure, work exposure, future career opportunities that lot but I’m gonna skip all that aite.)

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The past 5 years of my life truly had been a series of high ups and low downs in fashion of a heart rate graph. To say that it was not mentally and physically draining would be a lie, but it wasn’t time spent in vain. For what’s worth, I spent more time laughing than I did in tears, made friends I love and care about, and grown so so so much as a person - and that is beyond enough. 

Thank you for the last half a decade. 

May what comes next be equally exciting xx