It's un-officially official.
We only have 8 full weeks left in Logan.
All of that hard work David put into his school work, interviews and follow ups has paid off. He has received a couple of offers and we are hoping for a couple more, so we actually aren't sure what company we will be with in January. But we do know that we will be working in downtown Salt Lake, which means that we will be leaving our beloved Logan.
This is the place where we met, dated, fell in love, and got married.
The home of Utah State. Our Alma Mater.
The place where we cheered our guts out at basketball games, country danced until the wee hours of the morning, froze ourselves solid walking to class, drove to the grocery store 3 million times, met many incredible people who became the best of friends, hiked up Logan Canyon, watched the leaves change colors, read books on our porch while it was raining and many other wonderful things.
Can you tell that this move is a little bittersweet?
When we got the news I was SO excited. All weekend I was driving around Salt Lake thinking about how much I was going to love this new stage of our life. But now we are back in Logan and I am thinking about all of the things that I am going to miss so much. Seeing Old Main lit up at night. Driving past the temple on the way to school every day.
However, I can tell you one thing that I will not miss:
The incredibly bitter, windy, biting, frigid, terrible cold.
It is definitely a good thing that we are moving in December and not in May because I don't think that we will be sad to say "See ya later!" right in the middle of the coldest time of the year.
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Now, for those of you who are interested in the more technical side of things:
David has applied to several (several meaning 12) accounting firms to be an Auditor. Basically he will be traveling to different companies and auditing their "books." He will check to make sure they have the inventory that they say that they have, that they have actually made the money they report having made and other associated things. He is really excited and I think that it will be a really great thing for him!
There are four national firms that are... well... nationwide. These firms are called the Big Four. David received second interviews from two of these firms: KPMG and Deliotte. Deloitte just barely called and made us an offer, and we haven't heard back from KPMG yet. There are a lot of really good things about these firms (mainly that they have a lot of money for salary and other bonuses). However, they will work you about 70-90 hours a week during the busy season. Busy season goes from about January-June. That is a lot of hours to work per week.
There are also many regional firms that are located only here in Utah. Some of these offices are just as big as the Utah offices of the big four, they just don't have the chain name. This is really cool because you can get a lot of the same benefits from working at these larger regional firms without having such high pressure from the National Offices. (For example, the partners of the firm can make more decisions that directly effect the firm instead of having to receive permission from the national headquarters.) They don't give out as many bonuses, but they will also work you about 20 hours a week LESS than a Big Four firm would. There is a pretty big difference. I think that this is where we would ultimately like to end up. Right now we have an offer on the table from one of these larger regional firms, Hansen, Barnett, and Maxwell and we are hoping to hear back from another firm later this afternoon.
Then you have the smaller firms. David didn't apply to very many of these firms because they don't offer the same opportunities that the larger firms offer. However, we did receive an offer from a firm up here in Logan that we seriously considered taking. It would be awesome to live up here and raise our family here, but it just doesn't feel right. So even though we would love to stay here, we will definitely be taking a job with one of the Salt Lake firms.
The hardest thing about these things is that two of the offers that we have received are for September 2010. That is nine months away. It is hard to take a job from a company that starts in 9 months when you have an offer from another company that starts in 9 weeks. (If we do decide to take one of the offers that starts in September we are
seriously considering going to
Disney World and working there for 9 months!)
I hope that explains a little bit about the firms that we have been interviewing with. Several people have asked me questions, so I decided just to answer it here. It's a little confusing and all of my information may not be completely correct, because it's just what I understand from the many conversations that David and I have had.
I also want to say thank you to all of you who have been praying for us and sending good wishes our way. We have appreciated all of your love and support so much, and are so grateful to be blessed with so many good friends and family members.
Hopefully by the end of the week we will know for sure where we are going to be and then we will be able to start in on the apartment searching!
(So, if you know of any good places to live that are
fairly extremely affordable - send them our way!)
