EY/Asia Newsletter Submission

Being a foreigner in this country is not as easy as most of us make it seem. We do not see our families every week. Taking vacation time off does not consist of swimming in the beautiful beaches of Hawaii. It means traveling to the other side of the world in a cramped aircraft with four hundred people you do not know. It means twenty hours of torture and patient anticipation of your mother’s beautiful smile. It means submitting TRAX entries weeks in advance and facing the prospect of losing laptops holding twenty gigabytes of client information in a third world country. Being an international E&Y professional also means disguising a rather ugly accent, being asked questions that do not concern your country, and cringing through hours of baseball just to play a part in an animated conversation at the client site the next morning. Being an international student at a small liberal arts college in the flatlands of Ohio is a trivial matter. Being an international worker in one of the largest accounting firms in the world, in one of the biggest cities in the world, is multiple levels apart. I was in two minds because of this very fact. I wanted to work and help pay back my parents for all the financial sacrifices they made sending me to Ohio Wesleyan University. I also knew I wanted to study further, broaden my theoretical financial skill set, and therefore cleverly avoid corporate America for another year. One program made two desires fulfilled. One program made three years a contract. One program made the final four semesters of college make complete sense. One program made my first five twelevemonths in this country an absolute and gratifying triumph. Your master plan, well and truly.

I made a telephone call at three in the morning Indian Standard Time on the 27^th of December 2005 - the day I found out I was accepted into Ernst and Young’s YMP program. The news could not wait – it was four days to January and my new year had already been made. Receiving a letter from the University of Virginia confirming acceptance was the icing on the cake. I was nervous before I started school and for good reason. Four years prior, I was faced with the prospect of making friends in a country I did not know, in an academic environment that was completely different from what I had experienced before, with two diminutive suitcases that enclosed seventeen years of my beloved possessions. And here I was at The University, a campus thirty times the size of Ohio Wesleyan, facing smart people from all over the country who showed up primarily to stake their claim in a dog eat dog corporate world. It took me a little while to make my first few friends because I behave like an introvert at first glance. It also took me a while to get used to the rigor of eight hours of financial accounting drilled into my brain during class, and a further five hours of taxation, business law, cost accounting, and auditing while the sun made its slow summer descent. Soon enough however, I realized why this program was special. I made friends I could trust and relate to all over the country, exponentially improving my Ernst and Young network. I studied under some of the best professors in the country, people whose books I had to work with in some of my accounting classes at Ohio Wesleyan. I lived in one of the prettiest cities in one of the most stunning states in the country. I had to pay not a dime.

I eased into work at Philadelphia because of all the training I had already received at UVa. This made adjusting to corporate life an inconsequential matter. Everybody I have met at this company has been an exceptional teammate, coworker, friend, and mentor. This program defines Ernst and Young in the public accounting world and certainly makes it stand out. I cannot thank Ernst and Young enough for presenting me with an opportunity that made my parents proud. I do not know how long the program will continue but I do know I cannot wait to head back to balmy Charlottesville for the summer and complete the curriculum. I will not miss EY/AWS during the next three months but I will have a loaded busy season to look forward to.