A Letter

Dear May 30th, 2014 Amy, 

You probably should have left 15 minutes earlier for Colleen's rehearsal dinner. You're going to hit traffic, you're going to be late, and you're going to get yelled at as you pass through an intersection a tad bit too close to a pedestrian. 

You're going to feel awkward walking late into the chapel, with everyone else already lined up by the aisle. You shouldn't though, you didn't miss anything, and nobody cares. I promise. 

Plus, 3 and a half months later, you and your boyfriend will get stuck in LA traffic, and entirely miss the rehearsal for his best friend's wedding. So remember, it could be worse. And say a little prayer thanking God for gracious brides and grooms. 

Oh, I'm sorry. Did you get stuck on the word boyfriend? Yeah, I expected that to get your heart pumping a bit. You read it correctly, you have a boyfriend. That cute boy that you're going to spot across the hotel bar after the rehearsal dinner? The one that you're going to find out is a wedding crasher? You're going to fall in love with him. The next 24 hours are going to be the dreamiest of your life; enjoy it. And here you thought you were only here to celebrate someone else's love. ;)

You're going to wake up on June 1st wondering if everything that happened the night before was too good to be true. Don't worry, it wasn't. You're going to think you texted him first, but a few minutes later you're going to see a snapchat that was sitting in your inbox since before you sent that text. It's going to be a picture of the bench you and Mr. Wonderful spent the wee hours of the morning on exchanging life stories. It's going to have a red heart drawn around it, and from that very moment, you're going to know. It's not too good to be true; this is it. 

The next 5 months are going to be full of wonderful adventures that lead you deeper and deeper in love with this man. But I want to let you in on a little secret, God has a lot of other things going on too. 

You're going to apply for seminary school. Yupp, that thing you dream about in the far-off-distant-dream kind of way. One thing will lead to another, and you'll find yourself staring at a computer screen that describes the perfect program for you. You're going to apply, and you're going to get in. Congratulations!

You're going to have a few freak outs as things become real. You'll cry when you make your first payment, and when it hits your account. And when you do your first homework assignment. And when you write your first essay. 

But you don't cry when you do your first midterm, so boom. Progress.

You're going to find out that your job is changing at precisely the same time that you're starting seminary school. You're going to train for weeks before you make the switch, but you still won't feel prepared. The first two weeks will feel like you're in a foreign country, not understanding a word that is spoken to you. You'll almost cry a few times, and you'll feel yourself doubting your abilities. 

Don't. By week 3, you'll have your confidence back. I promise. 

Oh yeah, one minor thing. You're going to speak at church. On a Sunday. For two services. Sharing your testimony. 

I lied. It's not a minor thing, quite the opposite in fact. It's actually the coolest thing that has ever happened to you. Soak in it. Praise Him for it.

Shortly after, you're going to feel the pull to return to your home church. The timing won't really make sense at first, and you're going to get serious anxiety over "letting people down." A little spoiler alert: it's all going to make sense soon. And you're not letting anyone down. Your "pull" is very much from God, and He will bless you by each and every conversation you have explaining the decision to people. 

May 30th, 2014 Amy, get ready for the best 5 months of your life. As you can see from above, you should probably get yourself some tissues for those stress tears. Don't worry too much about them, though. They're all a part of God teaching you how to handle your stress, instead of letting your stress handle you. 

Get ready for a lot of your dreams to start coming true. Getting to share your testimony? Getting to speak on a Sunday? Getting to start legit studying the Bible? Dreams be coming true left and right, lady.

And get ready for the love story that you have been dreaming of since you were a little girl. It's even better, if you can believe it. 

And to think, we're only 5 months down the road. 

Love Always, 

November 6th, 2014 Amy

Financial analyst by day

So I seem to have developed myself an "About Me" slogan. You can find it on Facebook, or Twitter, or on this here blog.  

"Financial analyst by day, blogger by night. And Jesus freak 24/7." 
Sums me up pretty darn well.  

I've blogged a little bit here and there about my job, but mainly just about how it found me. I thought today I'd go into a little more detail on what exactly this "financial analyst" side of me does. 9 hours a day. 4-5 days a week. 

(If you're confused on that schedule, check out this post)

Growing up, I always wanted to be a teacher. Ever since elementary school, all the way up through the middle of college, that was the plan. In elementary school, I wanted to teach elementary school. In middle school, I wanted to teach middle school English. And in high school, I wanted to teach high school math. 

English was always my thing. I wrote poems, stories, scripts, journals, everything. My mom had been a math major (at UCSB, too!), and for that reason, she always kept me working on my math skills. Even as I was glued to the Diary of Anne Frank in middle school and getting a deficiency notice in pre-algebra (yupp, that happened), she pushed me in math. 

And thank goodness she did, because when it clicked, it clicked. I'm a stubborn wanna-be perfectionist, and when they opened up the honors algebra II/trigonometry class to anyone who wanted to try it, I jumped on board. Even when my counselors advised against it, I pushed through. And lo' and behold, I fell in love with math. Took 2 years of calculus before graduating high school, and bam. My dreams of becoming an English teacher turned into dreams of becoming a math teacher. 

Fast forward to the middle of college when my path changed. To keep this post from becoming an essay (already well on its way), I'll skip the minor details, and just say that I developed an interest in business. Corporate America was flirting with me, and I was definitely interested. 

And as you probably know, I've been in Corporate America ever since graduating in March of 2011. Here I am, on job #2, and still loving it. Will I be here forever? No clue. I'll be here for as long as God wants it.

So what does a financial analyst do? Well, I would imagine that we are all slightly different. Depending on the company, and depending on your particular focus. I work for a large engineering company. There are different branches of finance within our company, and my particular team is called the Financial Planning & Analysis team, or FP&A.

Our team's job is to analyze and keep track of the financial metrics for our division of the company. What are financial metrics? Bookings, sales, profit and cash. My focus is bookings, which I find super interesting because it's all of the future business that we are hoping to bring in. 

Being in a large, public, corporate company, we are given goals for the amount of dollars we must bring in with these various metrics each year. It is my job to help make sure that we meet those goals, and I am extremely privileged to work on a team with incredibly intelligent and successful men and women that make that possible.  

So now that you have an idea of what I do, I thought I would see if you have any questions! Could be about work, could be about getting a job after college, could be about what to do in college to prepare yourself for the workplace. I know a lot of you guys are either in college, or young professionals like meee. So if you have any questions, feel free to throw em' out there. 

Happy Humpday!