This Week We Feature Young Professional Avery B. Percival
This week we feature a young man who is in the prime of his adult life paving the way for his ultimate dream of one day having his own chartered accounting firm and being at the level where he can hire and provide employment to some of the best accountants.
“I want to be able to someday be at the stage where I can work six months a year and relax and do fun and other things for the other six months of the year. It is not my intention to have to be working so hard for all the days of my life, I must be able to have me time, quality family time, quality time for my friends and loved ones and at the same time be making money and not just making money, be making good money,” said Mr Percival.
Being in the accounting field is all he wants and all he has ever been in his professional career. Today he is employed within the financial services of the Virgin Islands where he performs accounting duties in several capacities.
According to our young professional, he savors every pen he puts on paper, every stroke he makes on the computer, every large or small group staff meetings or discussions that he has been part of and will be in the future because he understands how critical the financial services institution is to the continuation of the existence of the Virgin Islands, the place he calls home.
The young man said he is known to be the party guy, “Ask anybody and they would tell you I love to party, but there is the other side of me that most persons do not know. Partying is just that social hobby of mine but I have very deep seated values and that side my mother, my younger siblings, cousins and other close relatives would tell you about.”
Mr Percival grew up in the Long Look area and also received his schooling in the Territory before venturing further afield in the USA where he attended college. Today he is just a few months from completing his Master’s Degree and leaves the shores of the VI on August 31, 2013 for the USA to continue his studies along the lines of accounting at the completion of which he will be decorated with his Accounting Degree. “I am giving myself another five years to do everything that I want to do scholastically and be done and move on from there.”
Judging from his height and stature, it is not difficult to determine that Mr Avery B.E. Percival is a very athletic person. He said while his favourite sport is basket ball, he had a passion for athletics in his early boyhood days. “I had really liked track when I was younger, that was my passion, that was old school them, but then when I got to high school it stopped being fun because they started training us as if we were horses and I didn’t like that.”
He would then find out that he not only liked basketball but that he was quite good at it. “One day I tried it, liked it and has been my favourite ever since.” Avery has even played at the semi-pro level, having played with the East Texas Maverick for one year. “I wanted to go overseas but that didn’t work out because of politics, then I wasn’t going to waste another year when they finally got serious and offered me a contract. I was like nah I going back to school to finish my studies because I am not going to be young forever….. it’s not worth it to me. I could be just doing my degree and bettering my life that way,” Mr Percival related.
Little does one know that Mr Percival has a deep passion about the trends and behaviour of persons in the Virgin Islands and the effects they have on the youth. He said he is particularly concerned about the culture that does not allow youths to express who they are from the inside out as they are not liberated to do so. “Young people here are not given the opportunity to be themselves, they are not allowed to explore, make mistakes and learn from them or launch out in the deep and prove that they can swim back ashore without being eaten by a shark. They can’t date freely, they are heavily ridiculed if they are seen around someone today and another person next week, it’s always a negative vibe,” he stressed.
This he said accounts for many failing marriages and relationships as the process of a proper dating life is not embraced. “I am a firm believer in that you have to do some amount of moving around, learn persons, have experiences before you can decide to sit one place. Some people might not agree with me but that’s my opinion,” he said.
Avery said if he is to give any advice to young people it would be that they first surround themselves with persons who can be of good influence in their lives. “Position yourself with people who can motivate you to reach for the star and if your are falling at any time they would be there to either prevent you from falling or pick you up and not trample on you.”
Our featured young professional, Mr Avery B.E. Percival, also said youth should always be ready to go beyond the horizon, sail out in unchartered waters and stay firm.
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Kish