How I Turned Two Art Degrees into a Career in Accounting

Recently we ran a post about the best and worst degrees for getting a job. My comment was, “Does it count if I turned my two arts degrees into an accounting career?”

My undergraduate degree is in Communications and I have a Masters of Arts Management. What I would absolutely love to do is produce a multi-day music festival similar to Lollapalooza.

My grad program was mostly business classes with some arts classes thrown in. Two of the required classes were Accouting I and II (basic and intermediate). My school offered peer tutors for Accounting and while I don’t think I ever used them, I was aware of their presence. And that they were paid peer tutors. Since I excelled in the class, I asked the department coordinator how I could become one. Though he was staffed up when I asked, a spot opened up in the spring semester of my first year in the program.  Thus began my work in accounting.

That summer I had an internship at a small arts company. My boss mentioned that he would be interested in hiring me once I was finished with school. I continued to tutor undergrad accounting students and eventually landed a teaching gig. Once I was done with my grad program, I had to give up the tutor job. I got in contact with my boss at the arts company and he was able to hire me as a part time employee! Knowing my accounting background, he put me in charge of the bookkeeping. I kept that job for a little more than a year. I liked it a lot, but the markets crashed and what little money there was in the arts went away.

However, that summer I got a job with a start-up real estate company. This was 2008, when real estate was mostly bad news unless you were rich and knew the right people. My bosses were rich and knew the presidents of several community banks, The hours started small, but in my first year there we acquired 10 rental properties and a few more that we flipped. When I left that position last year, I had seen my bosses make nearly 100 deals on properties in various forms of distress.

I’ve been done with school for more than 5 years now and the only time I worked in the industry that I went to school for, it was a weekend side job. And anymore when I think about a job change, I still start with the accounting listings first.

Image credit: 401(K) 2012/Flickr

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