Christian Roderick: Quest for Reasonable Assurance

So let me explain what you're about to read should you choose to take the time.  I am getting graduate credit for this internship that I'm doing at GT in Tulsa.  3 hours to be exact (and I do mean exact).  Part of the requirement for my getting credit is that I have to write a paper at the end of the internship about "8 things I wish I had in my 'toolbox' at the start of this internship"...are you kidding me?  Lame.  So anyways, I've decided to have some fun with it because the dude probably doesn't read these papers anyways and I felt like it.  So this is the paper that I wrote.  I must tell you these three things about this paper though:  A of all, I did not read back through it and probably never will. There WILL be grammar mistakes and typos.  B of all, none of it is true.  Like literally there is almost zero truth to any of the stories I allude to.  I didn't necessarily learn any of these things.  They're just things I came up with to fill a stupid assignment and get my credit.  C of all, this is Christian Roderick's BS at it's finest.

Christian Roderick: Quest for Reasonable Assurance


My name is Christian Roderick. Many weeks ago, I began a quest. Then, I had only a very rudimentary idea of where this quest would take me in the end, and I had almost no idea at all about the road I would have to travel to get to where I am today. To say that it has been treacherous would be an understatement. I have encountered many monsters and obstacles along the way but can now proclaim that I have made it through unscathed.

As is the case with most quests, mine began with a challenge. There I was, just going through college like every other student who has dreams of becoming a CPA, when all of a sudden, Sir Masters Program grabbed me by the scruff on the back of my neck and said “Christian! I challenge you to complete an internship in the field of public accounting!” So of course, being the hero that I am, I accepted his challenge and shortly thereafter, I signed up with Grant Thornton in Tulsa to do an 8-week internship in their audit department.

The internship started on January 13. As I walked into this office on that first day, I was hit by an overwhelming sense of familiarity. I had seen this place before; I knew it. As I continued through the building and looked into all the faces of auditors as they worked away at their desks, the feeling of déjà vu continued to grow. Then, as I rounded the final corner before arriving at my assigned desk, I made eye-contact with a very pretty, petite middle-eastern girl and like a tidal wave, it all came back to me. I had interned here before!! I had spent 4 months here just last spring, I had worked with these people before, and I had already signed to start full-time with them once my Master’s degree was completed!

It was very relieving to realize that I was coming into an environment that I already knew and understood. All of the office culture that I had learned last spring started coming back to me as I began getting reacquainted with my surroundings. It is here that I will insert the first of 8 things that I wish I had known before this internship began. I wish I had known that just because I had been accepted into the office culture last spring did not mean that I was immediately brought back into the culture when I walked in the door this spring. I think that, no matter how long you work somewhere, it is never good to come into the office every day feeling like you own the place. It is always good to maintain a respect for office culture and remain humble as you go throughout the day. Definitely don’t freak out about trying to be “accepted” by everyone, but also don’t ever get cocky and assume that you’re on everybody’s good side.

I met this obstacle in battle by the end of my first week and am proud to say that I was victorious! I have added a plume to my helmet, a feather to my headdress, a bead to my necklace, a notch to my belt, or whatever other metaphor I could use to communicate that I had added a victory to my resume.

As I laid in my bedchamber trying to fall asleep the Friday night after that first week, I couldn’t help but think about whether this was going to be a job that I could do for the rest of my life. Could I be ok with being an auditor and slaying the evil that pours out of the lands of fraud and incompetence? I waged an inner battle trying to make the decision right then and there. It was a powerful time of inner turmoil for me. As I was laying there trying to put these thoughts out of my head, a beast seemed to rise up out of the darkness around me! It was wreathed in fire and kept screaming something at me over and over again. Only after about the 5th time it spoke did I realize what it was saying. It was repeating the statement, “Christian, you have to figure out whether you like this job RIGHT NOW!!”

Well, the instant that I had fully identified the enemy, I flew up out of my bed and instinctively grabbed the only weapon that I could find nearby which was my trusty old saber! I swung at the monster but the blow glanced off the thick hide on his forearm as he blocked my attack. I ducked as he countered with a swipe right at my soul, spun, and I came up with my saber, stabbing directly through his heart. I had defeated the enemy. I looked down at my old saber. I hadn’t used this thing in years. I knew there was a reason that I had named this sword “Chill Out and Stop Worrying” all those years ago. I wish I had remembered this sword before I started my internship. There’s really no need to worry about what’s coming 2 years down the road. I’ll get there when I get there and all I need to focus on is making sure that I’m working hard and doing a good job today.

As I walked into work that next Monday, I walked in as a new person. I was now as easy-going as they come and nothing was going to faze me. I came in and sat down at my desk, set up my computer, flipped it on, immediately checked my email and my IM to see who was online, and then sat back. I had gone through my beginning of the day routine and I was ready to get going on some auditing. As I looked around my cubicle, something weird started happening…as I looked at my desk, I slowly saw that it changed into a table, my cubicle slowly turned into an audit room with three other people sitting around my table, and our office turned into the office of a client that I was on last spring! I was out at a client today! Hooray! This is what I’d been waiting for.

So I was pretty excited to finally be out of the office and back out on the job. I was excited to get back into auditing where I knew I would learn and grow daily. I looked around me and realized that I already had all the materials I needed to get started on the first few sections of the audit that I was responsible for. Thus, I immediately began my work. As I started flying through the material, an uneasy feeling began to grow in me. I didn’t really take notice of it though and pretty much dismissed it as indigestion. That was my first mistake.

As the day went on, the uneasy feeling grew. Every once in a while, I could have sworn I heard voices telling me to “work faster! Just get through the sections faster!” But every time I thought I’d heard one, I’d look around and, seeing no one, I would dismiss them as my imagination. After I finished the first two sections, I sent them to my senior for review. That pretty much ended the first day out at the client and so I went home with a mixed feeling of accomplishment and uneasiness at the end of that day.

The next morning, I came into the audit room feelin good. I sat down at my table and went through my morning routine again. Soon after I’d finished my routine, my senior handed me the memory stick with my sections on it. She had finished her review and it was time for me to clear her review points. I wasn’t real worried about this though considering it usually only takes a few minutes to clear review points on these sections. I plugged in the memory stick and opened the file on it. Immediately, I knew something was very wrong.

As I sat there looking at my screen, my laptop began smoking and sparking. The smoke grew thicker and thicker and began to lift the computer off the table! It formed into a body with arms and legs made of smoke and my computer screen had become the head! I backed away slowly, poised and ready for anything. The monster became very still for about 5 seconds…then all of a sudden it began firing at me! I wasn’t sure what it was firing at me but I knew that I didn’t want to get hit for sure. I ducked and dodged shot after shot. Finally, I overturned a table and crouched down behind it for cover. There beside me on the ground, I saw what exactly the monster was firing at me. It was a review note that my senior had written me explaining a revision that I needed to make in my section! All of them were review notes. There must have been thirty of them around the room. At this point, the beast had stopped firing. I snuck a peek over the table and was alarmed to see that the monster was moving towards me! In that moment, I realized that the only way that I was going to defeat this monster was to gather up all these review notes and clear them! Over the next hour or so, I flew around the room, grabbing and clearing as many review notes as I could. Every time I’d review one, it would fly back to my computer screen and I could see the monster get a little bit smaller. Finally, after almost two hours, I cleared the last one and as it flew back to my screen, all the remaining smoke dissipated leaving my computer resting firmly on the table again. I slumped into my chair and rested. That had worn me out! But at least the monster of “Speed over Quality” had been vanquished! I wish I’d remembered to be sure I do a good job the first time instead of listening to the monster and trying to fly through my sections as fast as possible. If I’d have slowed down a bit, I probably would have had far fewer review notes to clear and who knows, the monster might not have even showed up.

The next couple weeks went by fairly quickly and with little incident. I wasn’t worrying about the future, I was taking my time doing a good job, and I was happy. So happy in fact that I failed to recognize an enemy force of darkness growing right underneath my nose! Everyday, this monster would come into our audit room with a sweet little smile and a cute little auditor quip. I thought nothing of her. However, I now know that she was trying to lure me into a false sense of security! She wanted me to feel like she was easy to talk to and like she would listen to what I had to say and answer the questions I brought up. I couldn’t have been more wrong though. One day, I came across an issue in my section that I needed to get some clarification on. I asked my senior who I should ask about it and she informed me that it was “this monster”’s area. I wasn’t worried at all. I had seen her so many times in our audit room being so sweet that I didn’t even sweat it. So I walked down the hall with my computer and into her office. There she was, sitting there looking sweet. She even had a dish of heart-shaped chocolates on her desk! (now I realize that they were probably poisoned) I sat down across from her and proceeded to show her a place that I thought she had maybe calculated a number incorrectly. Instantly she morphed into her monster form! She was gnarly and had 4 heads! All of them swiveled to look me in the eyes. She flashed her sharp teeth and all four heads screamed at me “you’re wrong Christian! I know I’m right! I can’t be wrong! I’m never wrong!” I was incredibly taken aback! What had happened to the sweet lady who had been sitting in front of me only moments before? Where had she gone? I looked around and realized that I had no weapon with me. I had been caught unawares and had not thought to grab anything on my way to her office. I started trying to frantically think of something I could use to defend myself. As I sat there with the FARMM (Financial Accounting and Reporting Manager Monster) bearing down on me, looking to rip out my jugular, I finally remembered something that a great hero had once told me. The great Matt the Man (Manager at GT) had once told me that if you can’t tell them they’re wrong, you have to pretend you’re stupid and let them figure it out themselves.

I immediately began to take Matt’s advice. I started using phrases like “I don’t really understand”, “could you help me figure out”, and “maybe I’m looking at this wrong”. As I did so, her heads slowly started to shrink back into one. Her face turned back into that sweet little smile and her voice changed from the screech of a monster to the docile voice of a kind, middle-aged woman. She began answering my question and showing me how she had arrived at the numbers she had given me. Through the process, she realized that she actually had made an error! We fixed it and I left her office like the monster thing had never even happened. Once again, Christian had triumphed over the enemy and defeated the forces of evil!

As I walked away from her office, I wished that I had known before going into that situation how useful it is to play dumb. People don’t respond well when you walk into their offices and tell them that they have been doing their jobs wrong. However, if you are humble and just walk into their office acting like you just can’t understand it fully, you end up raising questions that lead to them finding their own errors. Either way, you end up with the correct numbers in the end. It’s just that if you do it the right way, you can avoid confronting a bloodthirsty monster in the process.

The internship continued on until today. I met many more monsters and time after time, found that I had the tools I needed to defeat them. Yet there were other creatures such as the dragon I encountered in the cave of “Menial Intern Tasks” where I found that my tools were lacking. The moment that the dragon came into my line of sight, I knew which weapon to use on her. As she came at me with flames dripping from her mouth as she screamed “data entry! data entry!” I whipped out my battle 10-key and swung it with all of my might at her tree-trunk neck. I connected with my full force but my blade merely bounced off of her! I examined the blade of my 10-Key and realized that it was dull as could be! I had forgotten to sharpen my 10-Key skills before entering the cave. If I had sharpened my skills before entering the cave, I could have ended the battle with the dragon right then and there with one fell swipe of my weapon. Instead, I was forced to labor in that cave with a blunt weapon and beat the dragon back to the depths. I was victorious in the end but I wasted precious time.

As a result of all my battles, victories, struggles, and experiences here at GT throughout this internship, I have learned much. The experience that you gain in this industry is invaluable and I can already see that after just a few months. I enjoy my job here and I see my quest, not as one complete, but as one just beginning. As of now, I am but a lowly intern of the realm. Later, I shall begin training to become a CPA-KOTR (Certified Public Accounting Knight of the Realm)!! I’m very excited about getting to that chapter of this story. For now though, I must return from my quest to gain more training at home in OSU (Orodemis Staven Underwood…my hometown) before I can return to the wild world and continue slaying the enemies pouring out of the lands of fraud and incompetence.

So there it is.  That is my paper.  If you read all the way through it then I am thoroughly impressed.  I hope that my teacher doesn't, by some crazy chance, find this post and see the things that I said at the start of this post.  That would be bad to say the least.
 
Peace out.