Marching to the Beat of Your Own Drum

“Keep your eyes open, no matter how dark the night ahead may be.” The road to passing the CMA exam was not as smooth as I had hoped to be.

This spark of mine started from an aspiration in college, progressing with my love for finance and management, to becoming a push to enroll in Insights and devoting myself for it. Time management for review became a huge obstacle, as I was a new hire struggling to cope with my first busy season in audit. The pandemic had further increased the difficulty on balancing work and study, and my drive to excel went dimmer.

I was then reminded that this Herculean task need not be accomplished in one go, rather, I made the commitment to continuously advance even for a little bit each day my compass. This was fueled by knowing my reason behind taking the certification, and internalizing the purpose behind why the topics in the syllabus are needed to be known by a CMA professional.

To all aspirants out there, I hope that you realize that getting the title is not the result of one big jump but an accumulation of little steps of hard work. It is not an end by itself, but a key to knowing more about the business world of yesterday and today, and what it could be. We still have a lot to learn as we progress through life.

Stay curious!

About the Author:

Kirk M. Saromines graduated summa cum laude from the University of San Carlos with a degree in Bachelor of Science in Accountancy. He earned his CPA license in October 2019, and garnered the fourth highest average score of 89.33%. He took and passed with flying colors the two-part U.S. CMA examination in the September/October 2020 window. He is currently working as an external auditor in one of the Big 4 auditing firms in the world.