Yeah! First place nationally in the Deloitte Tax Competition! I was so excited when I heard the news yesterday. I often feel like it isn't real. I am glad that everything worked out and we could return honor to the BYU Accounting Program. We were so happy to learn that BYU also got first place in the graduate division! Not too bad at all.
Let me give you a bit of an update on this whole competition. Back in April, my tax professor asked if I wanted to be on the undergraduate team with 3 other guys. I said yes. I studied during the summer, but always felt I should study more. This nagging feeling was in addition to the frustration I felt at work.
Upon returning to school, my group met most Saturday mornings for practice runs with the cases used in previous years' competitions. I hated getting up so early every single day. 8 AM classes Monday-Thursday, 8 AM practice on Saturday, and 8 AM church on Sunday. Geez! Whenever we practiced I felt that we had little chance of winning. Even the night before, a teammate asked, "How do you think we'll do?" I didn't think we'd win, that's for sure. However, the day of the competition changed my mind.
We showed up to the Deloitte office in the Wells Fargo Building and loved the view from Utah's tallest building (I lived in taller buildings in Taiwan, but that's another story). We ate breakfast and started the competition (5 hours). We worked hard and pushed each other and shifted work from overloaded people to others in the group, etc. In the end, I felt that we had never performed as well as we had that day. As my mission president would say, "We left it all on the field." The worst part was waiting 10 days for the results.
They came yesterday: BYU first place. $2,000 to each student, $10,000 to BYU for each time. That means when Choose to Give comes around, I can tell them I gave $2,500 to the School of Accountancy. Don't mind if I do!
I learned several things from this competition: first, wives are awesome. Megan never doubted me or nagged me to study. Encouragement and true love made this possible. Second, good things come out of bad/hard situations. All I heard at John Deere went something like this, "Oh, tax? I hate tax, I can't believe someone would want to do tax." Don't get me started on that. Just remember that I'll be riding elephants in Asia next summer and they'll be working on spreadsheets. Third, surround yourself with positive people and miracles happen!
Life is good, it's as simple as that!
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