Mary

My Mom brought to my attention that I’ve not posted much information about Mary, the lead instructor for the course. She's originally from Texas, did her BA in biology at Austin College in Sherman, TX and later did a masters in accounting (zzzzzzzz…You hear that, Greg Walker? zzzzzzzzz! Can you exclaim sleeping?) at Northeastern in Boston. She’s 60 and started working internationally in 1993 when she did the Peace Corps Business Advisors program in Hungary. She’s also done accounting instruction contracts in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Russia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine, Macedonia, Uzbekistan, Hungary. Most of her other contracts have been brief update-type training courses for people who are already in the accounting profession—training them on transitioning to international standards or any changes to those standards. She’s had to confront some serious difficulties in her life—her Mom died when she was 19 and she has two sisters, one of whom was in a wheelchair all her life and who has passed away, the other recently overcame a serious illness also. Mary seems to be very in love with her husband (number 3) who is the membership coordinator or other figurehead for some international accounting organization, so both dart around the globe quite a bit. They have a place on the Gulf in northwest Florida (in the Central Time Zone, I couldn’t believe it!). She has one son from her first marriage, some trouble using her inside voice (I actually couldn’t help it and had to exclaim “Inside voice, Mary!” in the minivan the other day), and loves to talk. I think she’s accustomed to companionship where I am not. We have a very good working relationship, though I think it’s safe to assume we’re both getting on the other’s nerves after a month of being around one another 24/7.

She did say something I really related to. She was talking about how she’d done very well in school and had figured out how to succeed in that. But then when it came time to function in the real world, she really struggled—that it was very hard for her. She was an auditor at PWC, I think, and became frustrated by the pace they demanded and the low quality work output that resulted in. It doesn’t sound like it now as I write this, but I really identified with how she put it then. The way I think of it is that school is this clear path where the things you have to do to succeed are laid out plainly and there’s feedback and progress is easily charted. Well, then the doors to “the world” are flung open and these infinite possibilities open up and you have to be a bit more proactive, maybe a bit more crafty or resourceful, certainly more focused. More frustrating, it often seems, you have to know someone.