Never thought I’d end up in the teaching profession!
I hated school and left with less than a handful of O levels. I avoided A levels and university like the plague – finally ending up at catering college and then working in hotels and pubs, which I loved. After a few years, I then decided I should get a “proper” job. I found a spot in the office of an abattoir… Office work of course – not anything else! It is one of the funniest places I’ve worked at and I guess the guys needed a sense of humour to do what they did. Here I learnt manual bookkeeping using a system you guys won’t have heard of called Kalamazoo.
I then sent myself to college to learn to type and do shorthand (which I never quite mastered – I could write it but not read it back). I then moved onto an electronics manufacturing company, learning all things office, bookkeeping and payroll (lessons from the inland revenue for that). My specialism was credit control, but that was probably because I was an outrageous flirt and, at that time, most of the finance directors who controlled the purse strings were male!
We had to introduce a computerised system, which was highly entertaining as those computer things were alien beings in our world… The final project I was involved with was to implement a system of total traceability for contracts, which was then audited by the MOD. I then moved on to work as a group accounts controller for a plc property company. The best thing we did was to design and implement a property management system for all the leases. This was back in the day where off the shelf packages did not exist for this industry. Crazy job, crazy hours. 13/14 hours a day!
I then decided to do some studying. The choice: psychology (a love of mine) or accountancy.I chose accountancy with a view to going into psychology later. Then oops – I fell pregnant. I sat my first two exams Management Account and financial accounts when I was very fat – I was 40 weeks pregnant and hoping to not give birth in the exam hall! I completed first level of exams with by then two children and then took a break, as I was not sure what I wanted to do. I tried a few things; swimming, teaching qualifications and other bits and pieces. Again, I fell pregnant with my third child and decided to jump back into the accounting world (there seems to be a correlation with accounting and pregnancy!) and completed the qualifications.
In the year of my finals, I set up a practice with my friends (mostly sole traders but a few larger Ltd companies). As I am a glutton for punishment, I sat the CTA exams as well. After all that, my thinking was accountancy practice was not for me. I started teaching part time and continued studying in other areas of interest and qualified as a hypnotherapist and coach.
That’s sort of pretty much my work journey!
Special interests – Mental Health
Amanda teaches Tax, Ethics, Accounting and Assurance as well as many other subjects across AAT, CIMA, ICAEW and ACCA.
What led you to study Accountancy? Share your thoughts on our Twitter @first_intuition
