When Sarah-Jane Tate first started the accounting junior core at the BYU Marriott School of Business, she had no idea she'd have to navigate a concussion, a new job, and a broken engagement to make it through the school year.
At the start of college, Tate thought her career path was clear: She’d become an accountant, just like her dad. “It’s hereditary, I guess,” she says. “I’ve always really liked math and numbers, so I took Accounting 200, and I was like, ‘Yep, this is it. This is the one.’”
Then, during her first semester in the program, Tate fell down a staircase. She tried to push through a persistent headache, but focusing on her classes became increasingly difficult. “I knew I couldn't take incredibly complicated midterms.” She went to the doctor and was diagnosed with a concussion.
Not wanting to fall behind, Tate worked with her professors and an academic advisor to make a contractual arrangement to complete her coursework within a year. She also secured an internship for the upcoming summer at Breeze, where her soon-to-be mother-in-law worked. And then the unexpected hit: She and her fiancé broke up just two weeks before their wedding.
“It was a lot,” she admits. “I was going through a concussion and had these incomplete course contracts; I was trying to catch up on everything I’d missed, while I was also planning a wedding—which then I had to cancel.”
Tate began the winter semester courses for the junior core still scrambling to catch up on her incomplete work from fall semester. “I had an intro tax class, and two days into the semester, I was sitting there staring at the tax textbook for four hours, not getting a single word,” she says. “My brain was just not ready.” So, she returned to her school counselors and worked with them to find another way to move forward while she healed.
With their guidance, she registered for classes traditionally taken in the MAcc program. These classes—while not easy—were much less dependent on memorization than the courses in the junior core. Tate was able to complete her winter coursework while maintaining her scholarship.
Finally recovered from her concussion, Tate finished her first year in the accounting program, while the deadline to complete her coursework from the first semester loomed closer. So when the time came for her to begin her internship at Breeze Airways, she felt apprehensive to start work.
But, on her first day, she ran into the company’s CFO in the elevator. “He literally has remembered my name ever since, because all of the executive officers are just really awesome and personable,” she says. She felt her apprehension dissipate, and she enjoyed her time at the company as an intern.
As Tate finished the internship and returned to BYU, she continued working at Breeze part-time with plans to work there after graduating. With great relief, she finished everything she needed to receive credit for her junior core classes and start the next set of accounting classes alongside the courses for her double-major in Portuguese. During this time, she also began dating and married one of her friends she met through the Portuguese major.
Although her time at BYU Marriott has been more complicated than she originally anticipated, Tate has practiced flexibility and persistence to find ways over and around the obstacles in her life. Her ability to work with the people around her to find a way forward is something she hopes will serve her well as she climbs the corporate ladder toward her long-term goal of being a CFO.
