McGladrey Intern

I started my internship this week with McGladrey, a national public accounting firm that focuses on mid-sized, mostly private companies. I will be doing audit work in the greater Denver area until the end of July, at which point I hope to get a full-time offer to come back after a year of graduate school.


My orientation and training was in the exhilarating metropolis of Des Moines, Iowa! Although the soggy scenery left a bit to be desired, it was good to meet some other interns from the Central Plains region (Colorado, Iowa, Missouri, western Illinois, etc). Next month we have an intern capstone conference outside of Chicago, a chance to evaluate our experience at the mid-point of the internship. Maybe I'll take some real pictures on that trip.

Cougar Alums, Class of 2009!

There have been a lot of changes for us in the last month, but first things first. We graduated from BYU in April, Amy with a B.S. in Nutrition from the School of Life Sciences and a minor in Dance, and me with a B.S. in Accounting from the Marriott School of Management and a minor in Portuguese.



President Uchtdorf and Elder Nelson spoke at University Commencement (pictured above) and then Amy and I had the butt-numbing idea of attending both of our individual college convocations. We're very grateful to Mom, Dad, Michael, Bruce, and Sue for coming to celebrate with us. It also gave us an opportunity to spill the beans on some exciting news (see future post).







This video has no sound, but if it did you'd hear something like,
Jeff: "We're graduating honey!"
Amy: "I know! Woohoo!"

New Orleans

I often tell myself I need to do a blog post, but I never feel like I have anything interesting to say. All I do is go to school, study, eat, and sleep! It has been several months and I finally have something worth sharing.

I have been doing Mentored Research with two professors in the Nutrition Dept since July 2008. We are studying college students attitudes towards cooking, their cooking skills, and what kinds of food are made when they do cook. All of the students in Nutrition 100 classes had to participate in an assignment where they had to cook an entree and record their perceptions of its taste, how quick/easy it was, the cost of ingredients, and a several other factors. We have been tediously analyzing the data since late November. (Many of you probably saw me coding responses during the holidays) The collection of data was finally finished in early January. We each took a different aspect of the research and frantically put together our own abstract for submission to The Society for Nutrition Education (SNE).

SNE has finished reviewing the abstracts, and all of us have been accepted to go to the SNE National Conference in New Orleans! I, my two professors, and one other student will be spending 5 days in New Orleans this July to present our research. Even though I will be a 'graduate' by that time, BYU is treating me to an all-expenses-paid trip!
I think this is a perfect way to top off my education here at BYU. I have greatly enjoyed my BYU experience and as I get closer to graduation I realize just how much I have learned and applied my education in my life already. I look forward to moving on and starting a new phase of life, but I'm glad I can "go back" and reap the rewards of my hard work in July.

A Fortunate Self-Diagnosis

Reader's Digest version: Amy was tired. I got appendicitis. They put three holes in my stomach. They gave me jello. I am feeling a lot better. Amy danced. We are both sleeping again.

Thursday capped off a crazy week for me and Amy. She had been hard at work preparing for her folk dance performances of Christmas Around the World and pulled an all-nighter to finish a paper, beyond studying for tests in other classes and practicing with her tap dance group. I was doing what I could to help her have time to sleep.

My semester load has been easier, but this week I have been writing a few papers as well, and putting in a lot of hours at work helping with the newspaper’s Christmas contest. On Thursday I worked from 8 to 3, went to class until 5:30, then attended a service project with Beta Alpha Psi (accounting club) until 9.

Sometime during the evening my stomach started to hurt, presumably because I hadn’t eaten dinner. By the time Amy got home from dance rehearsal, the pain was still there, and I couldn’t sleep. The burning, concentrated aching behind my belly button felt pretty abnormal so I went online to check symptoms, thinking it could be either an ulcer or maybe food poisoning.

I wasn’t in any great pain, but I felt like I needed to get it checked out sooner than later. Hesitantly, I woke up Amy just after 1 AM and asked her to take me over to the emergency room, for lack of any other options. It was a hard decision, because I definitely didn’t feel sick enough to be going to the hospital.

Checking in at the emergency room, I felt even sillier telling them that I thought I might have appendicitis, considering the pain wasn’t localized on the right side of my abdomen like it normally would be. The doctor seemed skeptical as well, but decided to do a CAT scan to be sure. Things only started to feel serious when they put in my IV and I went unconscious for a few seconds and started to get nauseous.

We waited awhile for the CAT scan results, and I fully expected to hear that it was nothing but indigestion. But the doctor confirmed that I had a few stones obstructing my appendix and that it needed to come out. Because we caught it early, non-invasive laparoscopic surgery, where they make three small incisions under the navel, was still an option. We would just have to wait a few hours for the surgeon.

They moved me up to my own room on the sixth floor, where Amy waited with me until I went in for surgery just after 7. I don’t remember anything except moving onto an operating table, breathing on an oxygen mask, then waking up some time later shaking really bad. I guess when they removed my appendix, it was more inflamed than they initially thought. They moved me back upstairs to spend the day recuperating.

Amy was still able to make it to most of her classes on Friday, and she came to visit me after the surgery and just before her show that night. I was able to start eating liquids and soft foods right away, and I haven’t felt nauseous at all afterwards. Surprisingly, walking around relieves a lot of abdominal pressure and I am already feeling great, even without a lot of pain medication. I went to Amy’s Christmas Around the World performance last night—she did awesome and I was able to enjoy the show without too much discomfort. We are lucky to have identified the problem before it ruptured, and it actually came at a pretty fortunate time, instead of during finals or the holidays. Amy is now catching up on her sleep!

Colorado-Bound

Well I thought we should post a quick update to let everyone know that our plans for after graduation in April are starting to take shape. This week I called to accept an offer for a summer internship at McGladrey & Pullen, a public accounting firm located in downtown Denver. It marks the end of a lot of recruiting events that I am glad to be done with, and it means we'll be moving out to Colorado sometime in middle to late May. I am really excited about the people I'll be working with, and this firm is really good about letting you balance work with other life priorities, a luxury not usually afforded in the "Big 4" accounting environment. I'll be doing audit work on middle market clients, typically private companies or smaller publically-traded companies in the greater Denver area.

I'm also in the process of applying to the Masters of Accounting program at Colorado State University, with the only thing lacking being the GMAT exam that I'll take in a few weeks. I would start the program after my internship this summer, go to school for two semesters and be done by June 2010. Ideally, the internship would lead to a full-time job offer after I'm done with school.

Amy and I didn't carve any pumpkins for I think the third year in a row, but we did go to our friends' party dressed up as The Sunmaid Raisin Lady and BYU Quarterback Max Hall. We made lots and lots of Mom's pumpkin chocolate-chip and Bruce's famous chocolate-chip and butterscotch cookies and delivered them to our friends close by. We are really excited about the future additions to each of our families, congratulations Jon & Nicole and Cody & Jamie!

Small Service

Today I held the door open for a blind man and talked to him briefly as I registered to vote. Finding small ways to serve others is easy, try it!!

Homecoming Parade

I am part of the Folk Dance Ensemble at BYU this semester and had the priviledge of dancing during the Homecoming Parade this weekend! Our team did a choreography to Cotton Eyed Joe and an Indian/Bollywood/Bhangara dance that was performed by all 5 teams together. The route was a little less than 2 miles and we danced the entire time! I was exhausted by the end, but I love to perform so I enjoyed every minute of it. The crowd loved it and I had strangers telling me we were the best part of the parade! This was the first time I'd actually gone to BYU's Homecoming Parade and had a blast being in it! Today my legs and feet are a bit sore, but it was definitely worth it. Thanks Jeff for sitting in the cold and taking pictures! (I am in the team wearing red... in the back corner)