Free as a bird

My internship with Ernst & Young has finally come to and end. Before I left, I had an exit interview with a partner at the firm, where I would find out if I got an offer or not. I was really  nervous because I expected to get an offer and I wasn't sure how to respond since I was leaning towards not accepting. But the meeting turned out to be perfect.

We sat down and he explained that there was an offer printed up for me at the office if I wanted it, but that he wanted to talk to me about whether or not I wanted it. What a relief to actually be able to talk to someone about my true feelings about the job. He said that the rumor through the grapevine was that I said I would probably only stick around for 2 years (I don't remember saying that to anyone, but there are only a few people who I can think I might have said it to, and isn't that really annoying that someone basically "tattled" on me?). Apparently E&Y doesn't think 2 years is a very long time. I can see their point - they put so much money into training you during you first couple of years, and if you leave right after that, they don't really get to benefit from their investment of time and money. But, to me, two years is a really long time. I know that I cannot be in this career and be a mom at the same time, and I'm not going to wait another two years to have kids for the sake of my career, especially when I don't even like it that much.

I talked to him about how I knew public accounting would entail long hours, but I didn't realize how much I would dislike that. I told him that through the recruiting process, I heard so much about how great "the people" are, and how "the people" you work with make the long hours more bearable - I rarely felt that way about the people I worked with, or many people I met at E&Y for that matter. I was really worried about how this would reflect on BYU, but he assured me that this is the reason they do internships - to see who is a good fit - and they'd rather know now that I don't want to stay rather than finding out a few months in to full time work.

So now I get to be the black sheep at BYU who turned down an offer from the Big 4. I've already explained it to a few BYU people who all seemed quite shocked. Uhh... hello.. there is more to life than the Big 4. I'm sorry that I like being home for dinner. I'm sorry that I like having time to do my laundry and clean my house. I'm sorry I like to spend time with my husband. I'm sorry I don't think it's cool to brag about working 80 hours a week. But yeah, you guys have fun giving up your life for your job!