Trainee auditor's blogs

Snow, exam results and Local Government

3 February 2009

Snowed in at the start of February; no better a time to get back writing on here. After a second morning of tinkering with the idea of risking travelling to work, I have again decided to put it off for a while. I think one of the good things with the Commission is that while we undoubtedly do travel a lot within our work (well at least on my patch), there is recognition of this, and an understanding when things go badly, like today.

I’ve spent the morning trying to ring up the clients I had booked meetings with to put them back if possible, only to find that they themselves have failed to turn up. Strange how a bit of widely anticipated snow can grind everything to a halt, but still, got to make the most of it.

Exam results were last Friday, thankfully it all went well – why is it always the ones you thought you struggled on that you end up having eased through? It’s always a relief to lose weeks of built up anxiety in the matter of seconds while you log on and check that all important results page. I find myself reading and rechecking it a few times just to make sure before I can rest easy. Then there’s always the nervousness about ringing your colleagues to see how they’ve done once you know you’re through the woods.

Anyway, that all seems in the distant past though (was only last Friday), and funnily enough it’s back to the beginning as college is due to kick in again next week. On the work front, it’s the time of year where we phase Local Government work back into the agenda. December and January are primarily months where we do NHS interim and systems tasks, while now it’s a case of the same again in wholly different environments. It’s a little embarrassing sometimes revisiting the colourful flowcharts you drafted last year; a time when everything seemed so much simpler.

One thing is clear, the longer you’re here the more the role grows on you, sometimes making you quite self-critical about what you’ve done to date. I suppose this is one of the real positives though, the knowledge you can now do what you did last year a lot better and that you have raised the standards of your work to new levels.

Posted by: HS