 Everyone today we're gonna be learning about Jason Bender. Jason Bender is the scholarship recipient for the Pennsylvania CPA Foundation. And in my capacity as a board member of the PI CPA Foundation, I'll be discussing with Jason this scholarship that he earned. Before we start, Jason is an accounting student and very possible, a future CPA. He's a former Marine Corps Corporal. Today he's gonna tell us about how did he learn about the scholarship? Why did he choose accounting as a major and what are his future plans? Jason, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview. My pleasure, thank you for having me. Thank you. So first tell us, how did you learn about the scholarship? Because without knowing about the scholarship, you cannot even start to apply. That's right. So when I first started, I started my accounting degree at Luzern County Community College. My first accounting professor was Professor Lori Dunn. She was constantly pushing the PI CPA, making sure that us as students got it as a resource. And part of that information was the scholarship itself. So she was instrumental in making sure that I was able to find out about it. She made sure that we all knew how to join the PI CPA as a student member. You don't have to be a CPA to join. That's something that I didn't know when I was first looking into all this information. But again, it was all through my accounting faculty when she pointed me in this direction. Absolutely, the student membership is extremely important. These days we are living through COVID, but once we are post COVID, I hope so soon. What's gonna happen, Jason, the PI CPA will have physical meetings in your local area. You can meet other accounting students, other CPAs and start the network. So the student membership is extremely valuable. I encourage you all to join the student membership of the PI CPA or your state board of accountancy for that matter, of course. Because the key is to network and get to know people because you want to get a job, you want to grow in your field. Now, was it difficult to apply, Jason? No, the most difficult part about it was finding it, of course. I mentioned that I was fortunate enough to have a faculty member at the college I'm attending where they actively pushed the scholarship. I'm not sure how many people applied, but I know that there were three recipients that were in my area that got this same scholarship. It wasn't very difficult. It was a series of basic questions, who you are, what school you're attending, what your major is, what level of degree you're pursuing. And there was a short essay that essentially asked a little bit about your history, what your future intentions are for either higher education or what field you want to work in. And then there was a letter of recommendation portion that you needed a accounting faculty member to put your name up and write a short letter for you. That was probably the most difficult part of it, only because when I first enrolled, it was right in the heat of COVID. Everything was virtual, everything was online. I never had the opportunity to meet faculty members face to face. So it was kind of going out on a limb asking, essentially a stranger to put their name behind my name. So aside from that though, it was a very straightforward process. It was all done on the PICPA website. There was no weird redirects. There wasn't a whole lot of back and forth. I was able to sit down and do it in probably 15, 20 minutes tops. Not bad at all. Not bad. So simply put, ask and you should receive, right, Jason? That's basically the concept, absolutely. It works all the time. Now, Jason, could you tell us a little bit more why you chose accounting as a major? Because I want you to encourage other people, maybe what you're gonna shed light on may let other people think about this rewarding major. Sure. So something that maybe discourages a lot of people is you don't have to start fresh out of high school to get into this field. I'm 30 years old. I'm just finishing up my associates degree this coming May and I worked as a diesel mechanic for the last 10 years. So completely different industry, completely different skill set. That's one of the great things about this curriculum. If you have the right teachers and the right people to guide you, there's really no limit to where your background is that you can get into this industry. As far as why I chose it, it's really flexible. There's growth opportunities. There's so many, there's so much variety in the career paths you can take. You can work for a private company, you can work for the government, you can do audit, you can do taxes, you can do personal financial advising. There's just so much flexibility and that same can't be said for too many other career paths. There's a lot of skills, a lot of trades where you're pretty much pigeonholed into wherever your skills are. Being that money is the bedrock of every business and every organization. If there's a mission that you're particularly passionate about being an accountant is something that every business, every nonprofit, every city, state, you name it, they all need accountants. So there's so much flexibility, there's so much options. That was, it was a no-brainer to pick this industry to get started in. Well said, well put, Jason. I don't know what else to add on top of this, but I can tell you over the years I've been in education for almost a decade. I have seen mechanics and I know few of them in person. They started at the community college. I should connect you with a guy named Philip. He's a CPA now. We turned chefs into successful CPAs. So as you just said, you can start out of nothing and start taking basic accounting with the right guidance and you can have a professional prestigious certification. And I'm assuming down the road, we're looking at Jason Bender CPA, is that correct? That's correct. There's a lot of different designations. Of course, CPA is the one that most everybody knows about and most everybody strives for. There's other designations that I have been playing around with the idea on. There's a certified bookkeeper designation. Yes. That doesn't have the 150 credit hour requirement that the CPA does, but it's something that you need work experience and there's tests, just like every other professional designation. Yes. So the certified bookkeeper is something I've been looking forward to. The certified public accountant, of course, and then the CMA, the certified manager accountant or management accountant. That's another one that I've been looking at. Absolutely, you still have time to decide. Farhad, myself, you can always reach out to me, not only you, to anyone who's listening. I'm willing to be your guidance, support. I'm there every day for you out there, whether it's on YouTube, LinkedIn, you, Jason, or anybody else who's listening. I'm always, you can please consider me as a mentor. I greatly appreciate the time and the name of the foundation. I thank you for your time. You guys heard it from Jason. It's not very difficult to apply to be a student member. You need to grow professionally and the PICPA gives you that route, especially if you are living in Pennsylvania. You want to network with local CPAs, other students. Grow your network. That's the key to succeed in this industry. And as Jason said, accounting is wide range. You also have taxes. You can be an enrolled agent. You can be a CPA, you can be a CMA. You can go into forensic certified fraud examiner. You can be internal auditor. So the field is so wide and large so you can pick and choose what works for you. Jason, I do greatly thank you for your time and everybody else, thank you very much. Expect more similar interviews from the PICPA scholarship recipient. Thank you so much, Jason. You have a great day. Thank you too.