Tuesday, August 22, 2017

"The Power of Positive Thinking" by Staff Accountant, Rachael Creger


When I was a student at UofL I was gifted a copy of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking. It collected dust on my shelf like most non-school books, and then got thrown in a box when I graduated and moved out of my apartment by campus. This past week, over a year since boxing up all my possessions after purchasing my house, I finally started to unpack my boxes of books. I stumbled upon this gift and flipped right to that day’s page. I’ve continued the habit of checking my book nightly before bed and something about last night’s quote, "Always maintain hopefulness, especially when the going is hard," really spoke to me.

College is a tough time, recruiting season is a tough time, and tax season is a tough time – if I’ve learned anything through college and the beginning of my career, it is that a little bit of positivity goes a very long way when the going gets hard. One bit of positivity that gets me through the most stressful of days is knowing that when I get home, I won’t have to do more work, unlike college and the seemingly never ending reading to do or projects to complete.

One of the hardest parts of my second tax season was leaving work, sitting through a 3 hour night class, going home and studying into the wee hours of the morning and attempting to pull myself together and do it all again the next day. One of the highlights of my third tax season (third?! That’s weird to say!) is that when I finally shut down my computer at the end of the night and went home, I didn’t have to worry about cramming for my finance exam, or squeezing in an online quiz before midnight.

So many people through my life have told me that college prepares you for the real world, but after a mere 15 months in the “real world”, I’d like to dispel that myth. Yes, college does prepare you for some of the knowledge you’ll need in your career, but the two are so different. My little nugget of positivity for you is that eventually, at the end of all the late nights and coffee-fueled study sessions you can trade all of that in for an amazing career at a company you love where you will still be consuming large amounts of coffee but where it will all finally be worth it!

Every all-nighter, every tear shed over the regret of procrastinating, every $300 textbook will be worth it someday! I rest easy knowing that I worked my butt off for 4 long years to get my dream job at an amazing firm. So hold on tight, because these next few semesters will be hard and busy and overwhelming at times, but I promise that someday you will look back on your college experience and be so glad that you filled your time with late night study sessions and tax season internships. Good luck this recruiting season and good luck with the rest of your career – college & otherwise.
 
 

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