starting my first full-time job during the pandemic!!
Hey y’all!
How are you? I took my LAST ever CPA exam this weekend on Saturday so I felt SOOO relieved afterward (lol hopefully I passed, I’ll find out later this month!). H and I watched Casablanca for the first time Saturday night (wasn’t amazing but definitely glad I watched it!) and then I spent most of Sunday reading, taking an autumnal walk, and then figuring out my benefits and enrollment for work…
Speaking of work, this is what today’s blog post is all about! As most of you know, I started my full-time job in public accounting two weeks ago! For those who don’t know, I got my master’s degree in tax over the past year and am starting my career as a tax accountant. I’ll be working on federal tax returns for pretty much all types of entities for my first year. Before I proceed further with this post, I want to disclaim that all opinions stated on this blog are strictly my own and do not represent those of my company unless otherwise noted. I have to mention this because my full-time job is client-serving and I want to stay compliant!
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s debrief my first two weeks of starting my full-time job in this virtual environment! I was extremely antsy and excited to start work. I started recruiting with the firm I’m at now since the beginning of my sophomore year in college, so this felt extremely long-time coming! First thing’s first: my work-from-home setup! If you saw my bedroom tour post, you know I had a monitor already but it was definitely time to upgrade for the full 8-hour workday. Luckily, my firm subsidizes a lot of well-being equipment so I didn’t have to drop too many pennies for this new setup!
I decided to get this standing desk attachment! I looove standing while working so I knew I had to get some variation. I love my Ikea desk too much to fully replace it with a standing desk though, so I opted for this alternative instead. I love it so far!
The keyboard and mouse were supplied by my firm for free, so I was very happy about that. Full-functioning, working Jen coming your way!!
The first week consisted mostly of watching looots of compliance and firm training videos. It was a lot of screen time, and as you know from last week’s post, I’ve been taking mini midday walks during the work day! Rain or shine, it breaks up my day perfectly and a literal breath of fresh air makes it so much easier to finish off the rest of the work day. Highly recommend!
What’s fun about starting work virtual is that I’ve been having a lot of my trainings with new hires from all around the entire country! I’m based in Seattle but I’ve been on calls with new hires from Nebraska, Florida, Texas… one of my friends from college started at the same firm but is in a different state, and ended up not only on the same Zoom call as me, but also on the same breakout room!
Week one felt pretty slow just because it felt like I was super antsy for things to start happening. I caught up with a few professionals I really liked learning from during my internship, and then week two started! Week two was a lot more technical, which was honestly a good review from my master’s program. I’m still waiting for my schedule for the clients I’ll be working on for the 2020 busy season, so I’ll be patiently waiting for that this week!!
Overall, I’m extremely happy I chose the firm I ended up at; the people, resources, and opportunities are ENDLESS and I’m just excited to see what the future holds with my career at this firm.
(First couple of weeks don’t go without hiccups though… I found out I didn’t enter my bank account number correctly for my direct deposit so my first paycheck is going to be very delayed loool.)
Will you be starting a new role virtually? How are you preparing for it?
More work updates to come from me on the blog in the coming months! Thanks for reading!
Jen x