Alex is a NINJA CPA blogger. First of all congratulations to everyone that found out they passed a section of the CPA Exam and also a keep your chin up for those who found out they didn’t. This exam is a marathon not a sprint and none of us is defined by 1 test result good or bad. I promised myself when I started this journey that I was going to be honest with myself and others, so here I am with all my excuses for why I haven’t studied. I do want to talk about something a little more serious that doesn’t affect everyone or maybe even most people but if there’s just one other person who does maybe it’ll help them. Does the CPA cause depression? No, but that didn’t stop me from googling CPA and depression and finding approximately 1.8 million results. I know people say you

Alex is a NINJA CPA blogger. First as an adopted Texan I must say please keep my state and all areas affected by Harvey in your thoughts and prayers. The recovery is going to be long from but I know we’ll get there together. I PASSED AUDIT!!!! It was the biggest sigh of relief seeing that magical 76. I know it’s not a 90 or 95 but hey we’re just trying to pass and passing is a 75 so if I get a 76 on all parts I will be the happiest CPA you have ever seen. Now if you ask any CPA candidate I’m sure we will tell you that things didn’t always go according to plan but we also had habits we maintained that helped as pass. I’d like to discuss the habits that I used in Audit that I’ll be bringing with me to FAR as well

Alex is a NINJA CPA blogger. Welcome to the longest week of my life. Next week after 4 AND A HALF MONTHS I will receive my first CPA exam score for AUD. I would love to say that I know I passed or even that I felt I failed but I can’t. I just have to say that phrase that our parents told us when we for sure not going to get that toy all the other kids had, “we’ll see”. After taking my first exam I tried unsuccessfully to integrate life into the CPA exam and that is a task I can confidently say I have failed. Now I didn’t mean to fail at this CPA and life integration but it’s hard. It’s like going on a diet you have little cheats, working a little later than you need to, spending a few minutes (hours) on Pinterest, a few

Alex is a NINJA CPA blogger. If you can run a marathon you can do ANYTHING. Does anything include the CPA exam too? I truly hope so because I’ve done 2 full marathons, 11 half marathons, and I coach long distance runners 3 times a week. I love running and the discipline it requires but so far the CPA exam has been harder than any race or any training day I’ve ever had. I guess I should start over. My name is Alex and I graduated from college in 2011 with a Masters of Accounting, quickly after that I started at one of the Big 4 accounting firms, with all hopes of passing my CPA exam the first year and getting that sweet bonus, but unfortunately life happened. After leaving Big 4 to go to a smaller firm and hopefully a better quality of life, I again decided to pursue the