I'm a legit working woman! Well... kind of. We're just doing training now, so I haven't actually started doing any work.

Oh I am so excited to have this job. The things I'm learning at training have gotten me even more excited. I think it's going to be a good fit for me. UP is an awesome company and I can tell they try hard to take care of their employees. There isn't a "weed out" mentality like there is at the Big 4 - they genuinely want you to have your career with them.

Let's see... UP works really hard to emphasize safety. A large portion of their workforce is in very risky environments where even the slightest mistake could be the difference between life and death, so there is a lot of push for safety and this is carried over to the corporate level. Whenever you meet in a larger conference room or training room, the meeting starts with a safety briefing where you identify someone who can perform CPR, someone who is willing to retrieve and use the AED if needed, someone to call 911, where to go in case of dangerous weather, and where to go if we need to evacuate the building.

We've had a lot of socials. They took us out to lunch twice, we had an evening welcome event, and we had a golf tournament this past weekend. A golf tournament! We were on teams and it was a scramble, which means everyone hits and then we pick the best ball and all hit from there until we get to the hole. I. Am. Not. A. Golfer. I was enjoying the first... 5 holes, but then I was kind of bored. We played the whole 18 holes, and it was windy and cloudy and cold!

There are like 50 or so people in the audit department, and the vast majority of them are recent college graduates. The pattern is that you start as an "associate auditor," get promoted to "staff auditor" after a year, then "senior auditor" the next year. At that point you can leave audit and go work for the company in another division, or stick around for one more year as an "audit supervisor" before leaving for another department.

Let's see.. what else has happened in my life - we took an overnight train to Denver last month to buy a used car. I love it, it's so cute. The weather here  has been weird - it bounces back and forth between nice and sunny and rainy and windy. So windy! That's going to be an adjustment. Omaha is beautiful though. I'm surprised - I was expecting it to be really flat and no trees, basically big sky country. But, it's actually very green here, and there are more trees here than in Utah. It's also quite hilly here.. not like Virginia hilly, but some nice rolling hills.

It's starting to feel like home here. It's still hard being away from my friends in Provo, being only a text away from hanging out. It takes me a long time to warm up to people enough to totally be myself, and I have some mild social anxiety from spending time around a lot of new people. I'm not one to overly self conscious about my appearance, but I am totally self conscious about my personality, especially when I'm around new people. But, meeting new people means making new friends, and I know I'll feel better soon.