[TNCPA16]

I’m pretty sure my state board and the AICPA are trying to give me a nervous breakdown.

My CPA journey has spanned 8 looooooooong years. I took my last part, REG, in mid-January and was going to lose AUD if I failed. I (thankfully) passed – but the high I was on from passing turned to panic. I had taken AUD 7/13/2014 and REG 1/16/2016…exactly 18 months and 3 days. Even though NASBA showed that my AUD score expired on 1/31/2016 and not 1/13/2016, I still was freaking out wondering if I missed the deadline by a measly 3 days (what if my state is different than NASBA? What if NASBA is wrong? What if they transposed the numbers? Why did I not think about this before I scheduled my exam?!) I contacted my state board 2 weeks after the score release, hoping they could confirm that I was indeed done – but they had not received my candidate file yet and couldn’t tell me when they expected to receive it.

So I have been waiting and wondering. And waiting…and waiting some more. And freaking out.

I finally received a letter with all of my final scores about 2 weeks ago and figured surely that means the board would have my scores now. But no word from them. Nothing. Still have not received an application or any confirmation that they had my info.

So I called them today. Turns out they had my exam scores but were missing my ethics exam. The ethics exam the AICPA was supposed to send to them back in November when I took the dang thing. The ethics exam that I also had personally emailed to the Licensing Director at the state board almost a month ago. The ethics exam that the Licensing Director swore up and down he always printed every time he received one…the ethics exam that he profusely apologized for missing when he searched his inbox and found my email.

He emailed me a letter and license application 10 minutes later.

Eight years, thousands of dollars, countless hours of studying, more tears of anger and frustration than I care to admit…and it’s the ethics exam that I spent less than an hour on that nearly sends me over the edge…