Why an Accountant?

Before moving to Brazil at the end of May 2013, I had worked in the USA as an accountant for forty years.  I was as an Auditor for Ernst & Ernst, a Federal Tax Manager for Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc., an Accountant for the Anti-Defamation League and a Cost Analyst for the Office of Sponsored Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  

Why did I take this career path?  Why an accountant?  In the beginning, it should have been an obvious choice.  My father started out as a bookkeeper, a basic form of accounting.  But he never encouraged this for his son.  However, he did utter these immortal words, "Happiness is a well paying job."  Really?  But I took his advice.

When I was heading to college, I applied (and was accepted) as an engineering student, probably because my brother Paul did the same and I didn't want to be a doctor as my mother had hoped.  But in my last term in high school, I was having difficulty with Chemistry.  Ironically, it turned out great.  I believe I got the highest mark in the Regents exam at OHS that year.  Thanks for your help, Mr. Reed.

Anyway, one day in May 1963, because of Chemistry, I drove to Penn and was easily able to switch from Engineering to Business.  Why Business?  Probably because of my father (President and General Manager of a local dairy).  

In my second year at Penn, I was required to take a basic course in Accounting.  As a morning person, I signed up for the 8 AM class, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  The professor was in his 40s and looked physically fit in his three-piece suit on his way (at 9 AM) to his real job.  He was a practicing CPA-tax attorney and a former Marine (I think he included this in his background to be intimidating) who enjoyed teaching one accounting section each year.  I wish I remembered his name.  He encouraged me, by his energetic example, to take that path to accounting.

Officially, we were Section #1 and the professor wanted us to be the #1 group of accounting students (based upon our test scores on department-wide exams).  He demanded we show up at 8 AM and begin the class on time.  He always took attendance and if you were not in your seat at 8:00 he gave you a half an absence.  If not there by 8:05, a full absence.  Four absences and you failed the course.  So, we had excellent attendance from the very beginning of the semester.

If you like numbers and logic and solving problems, you will like studying basic double entry accounting, which is what we did in that course.  I liked it right away.  The way the professor presented the material was stimulating.  At the end of the year, I was so enthusiastic I chose to be an Accounting major.

Over the next two years, I took four more accounting classes from four different professors.  None of them came close to matching the teaching ability of my first one.  As a matter of fact, two of them made the subject matter quite boring.  But I persevered because of my first professor.

However, I have learned from my years in the accounting field that the most satisfaction I got from being an accountant was the people I worked with.  In this regard, I would like to thank the late Marty Kolins, Joe Giordano, Delferine Spooner and Kevin Maynor.