This makes my 100th blog post. 100 is the scroll limit for the blog, which means it may also be the printing limit (I found a website that will turn this into a book), so this needs to be my last post. I now wish I had combined a few posts earlier in the year. But, I didn’t, so this post will have to be the catch-all. Sorry for jumping from topic to topic.

1. Visit from the in-laws! Linda’s parents came to visit for a week. That was really nice. We were pretty low-key with them. We went to the temple and showed them around town, but mostly I went to work like normal and Linda did stuff with them.

2. Henry’s birthday party! We delayed Henry’s birthday party a bit so Linda’s parents could be here. Henry’s party was a big success. Pretty much everyone from his class came. It was a little rough though because no parents stayed, and none of Henry’s friends speak English. We had the party right after Henry got out of school on Friday, which meant that Adelaide was still in school. So, our means of communication were pretty limited: panamime, Google translate, or ask Henry to translate. So, little things like explaining rules for the Piñata or Duck, Duck, Goose were very complicated. But, we survived!

4. Cleaning Checks. We haven’t lived in a rental in 8 years. And, the one that we were in then we had lived in for 5 years. When we were going to move out the landlord told us “Your carpet and paint are both at their depreciation cycle, so we are going to paint and replace the carpet. Don’t bother to clean.”

This experience was very different. The landlord scheduled a “pre-inspection” for us and then gave us a list of things to do. Some of it was ridiculous, especially since they increased our rent from the asking price by $300 because of the “extra wear and tear on the house from having so many kids.” They told us we needed to prune the trees and bushes (despite explicitly telling us when we moved in that we couldn’t do anything to the yard other than water). We needed to wash/paint the walls (which is hard in the Netherlands since they have heavily textured walls). They wanted to charge us $800 to replace the screen door because the mesh had come loose (they told me that I was not allowed to repair that myself; I did anyway). Long list of stuff to do …

Linda was a trooper and worked really hard. When moving day came, I wasn’t taking any gruff from them. For example, when they inspected the screen door, they asked me if I repaired it myself or hired a professional. I asked if it made a difference: was there anything wrong? They reluctantly admitted that it was perfect. I then said that I repaired it myself and that I have taken class in carpentry and it was an easy fix. We had part of the house painted (the kids had legitimately damaged one wall). The painters left right as the owners came. We really liked the painters and they liked us, so they made a big deal of saying “Just finished painting” as they left.

There was another wall that was pretty dirty and the owners wanted painted. They looked at it and said, “This wall looks much better, did you paint it?” I replied, “No, we washed it.”

We had several repeated interactions like that. In the end they still wanted a professional cleaner to come through because, for example, the kitchen floor needed to be mopped. I pointed out that I had mopped it the night before but that it was raining outside and they had just walked inside with their shoes on (I was wearing socks), so they shouldn’t be surprised that it is dirty again.

They also told me in a previous email that I needed to pay August rent (our contract was through August 10) because they would not be renting the house out before then since the house wasn’t fit to show to potential renters. However, when we had the inspection on the 28th, they brought in some potential renters immediately after the inspection and signed a contract for them to move in on August 1st. Double charging rent for the month of August?

I’m not sure if we’ll get any of our $5000 deposit back. I think we deserve most if not all of it back, but we heard from a few neighbors that the owners have a reputation for only renting to foreigners and not returning any of the deposit no matter what. All I can say is that we did our best and felt like we behaved honestly, so what they end up doing is on their conscience.

3. Saying Goodbye. The biggest reason I’m so slow in posting this is all my emotions about saying goodbye. We made so many dear, dear friends in the Netherlands. It was hard to say goodbye. As much as we like Massachusetts, I think we made closer friends in our 1 year in the Netherlands than in our 7 in Massachusetts. Several people threw us goodbye parties or brought us presents.

4. Heading home. Getting home was a little bit easier than getting to the Netherlands. A little bit, but not much.

First, we had to sell our bikes and car. The local bike repair man was great. He gave us a good price for our bikes. For example, he sold us Linda’s bike and when he bought it back he said, “It’s in just as good of shape as when you bought it. I take a 30% cut for my profit, but otherwise I’ll pay you the same amount I sold it to you for.” He was like that for every bike. Very clear, honest, and fair. Some things he said directly, “This is too broken to sell” or “There is no market for used bike car seats”, but I felt like he was honest. Even those things he said he would take it we wanted and try to give them to someone in need. Overall, it was a good experience and I was glad we could work with him for buying, repairing, and selling bikes over the year.

Selling our car was trickier. We bought it used for almost 9000 euros. It’s a van, so not many dealers buy or sell them. We eventually had to take it back to the same dealer we bought it from. He offered us 1000 euros for it. Unfortunately, he had us in a tight spot and he knew it, so we had to take it.

Our next big challenge was getting rid of stuff. Lots of trips to secondhand stores, friends, and neighbors.

Buying flights was tricky. We initially thought we’d fly out of Amsterdam. Flights from Amsterdam to Boston were 1200 euros a ticket (7200 for the whole family), no matter when we flew. We did a little more digging and found we could fly out of Brussels for only 700 euros a ticket (4200 for the whole family). The funny thing is that the flight was Brussels to Amsterdam to Boston. Yes, adding on the Brussels to Amsterdam leg of the flight reduced the cost by 500 euros per ticket. I guess that’s what happens when companies engage in market-based pricing rather than cost-based pricing. Delta could have saved money if they had not made us take the first flight (the first flight wasn’t operated by Delta; it was a KLM flight that Delta had to buy for us). Econ phrases like “deadweight loss” and “Pareto improvement” kept going through my head, but there was nothing we could do. We ended up renting a hotel in Brussels the night before so that we could be on the 8am flight.

Linda, Henry, Sarah, and Timmy actually went to Brussels (by train) the day before that (i.e., 2 nights in the hotel). At this point we only had a rental car, and it wouldn’t fit all of us, so they took the train. Furthermore, I was concerned about doing finishing touches on cleaning while Henry and Sarah were still around actively subverting the cleaning process (not intentionally, just by nature of their age). So, we sent them off on Tuesday. JJ, Adelaide, and I worked our tails off until the inspection Wednesday afternoon, and then we packed the car as tight as it could possibly go, and drove to Brussels.

The next morning we woke up at 4:30am so we could take the shuttle to the airport with all of our luggage by 5:30am. Delta told us we needed 4 hours at the airport in Brussels. We decided to cut it “close” and still ended up sitting around with nothing to do for a good hour and a half.

Then a flight to Amsterdam, more sitting around waiting (the flight was delayed by 2 hours) and then a long flight to Boston.

While in the airport, I filled out some forms online to notify the Dutch government about our move, cancel Internet and electricity, etc.

Once again, the forms were not set up for a large family. On one page I had to select everyone that was moving with me. I selected everyone shown, but Henry wasn’t listed. When I clicked next, I got an error message that we were leaving a minor child behind, alone. So, I went back. Once again, Henry wasn’t there. I noticed, though, that the webpage put everyone’s name in a box and we filled the whole box. There was no scroll option. I think the website was just designed for a maximum of 5 lines displayed in the box with no scroll. So, Henry was listed but I couldn’t click on him.

I proceeded with the form and, at the end, there was a free text box for “anything else we should know?” I said that Henry was coming with us too but that I couldn’t check the box. Well, a couple of days later they emailed me and said, “That’s not good enough. You need to fill out these extra forms by hand to have Henry move.” Until we fill those out, I guess Henry is still legally living in the Netherlands by himself. He is physically with us in Massachusetts, but legally he is still in the Netherlands.

Once in Boston, we had another logistic challenge. We had sold our van before we left, and we didn’t think we could fit all of our stuff in a van if friends picked us up. So, we had one friend pick some of us up in my little that he had been borrowing for the year. We also rented a truck. Why a truck? Because it was actually cheaper to rent a truck than to rent a van or even an economy or compact car. Welcome to America.

However, the Boston airport is ridiculously crowded. Immigration took about an hour, and then I had to wait about 45 minutes for the shuttle to the car rental. Even then, we couldn’t fit our luggage on, so Linda stayed with the luggage and Henry and Sarah while I went to rent the car and then I came back and picked them up. Then, finally, a drive back to our house. Oh, and did I mention that I didn’t have a working cell phone at this point because I only had the Dutch number? Linda sort-of had a working phone, but some of our kids had tried to break into it and it was locked, so she had to move the sim card to her old phone that had basically no battery life and the home button didn’t work.

But, we made it!

After we made it home we found that our water heater was leaking in the basement and we had a number of other little issues around the house to deal with (e.g., mice in the basement, furniture in the wrong rooms, no sheets), but we got it all worked out. We miss the Netherlands a lot, but it’s also nice to be home.

5. Miscellaneous. Now for some random miscellaneous things that I wanted to mention/show but didn’t really fit anywhere else. They really belong in a separate post (i.e., not coming after the “We’re Home!” post), but I’m at that 100 point limit, so I have to squeeze them in here.

One last thing, I was interviewed on the podcast “Accounting Stories”. You can listen to the podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/36bszoFIUTzi6ydddKhF7S?si=9386183d9b734e10

In the US, a bachelor’s degree is supposed to take 4 years, if the student is full-time and passes all classes.

In the Netherlands, a bachelor’s degree is only supposed to take 3 years.

In both the US and in the Netherlands, a master’s degree is one additional year of study.

In the US, accounting students never go beyond the master’s degree if they plan on being an accountant (e.g., auditor, tax professional, controller). Often they stop at the bachelor degree.

In the Netherlands, at least at Tilburg, the bachelor degree is a generic business degree. All students who want to be accountants do a master’s degree. Many do a “post-masters”, which focuses on preparing for professional certification exams, is a part-time program, and is paid for by the employer.

So, if you ever have to convert degrees, you can sort-of think of it as a master’s degree in the Netherlands took as much time and gives as much education as a bachelor’s degree in the US, while the post-masters in the Netherlands is similar to a master’s in the US.

Another big difference between the US and the Netherlands is that a university student must do a thesis in order to finish either a bachelor or master’s degree. I got to supervise 7 master’s theses this year at Tilburg. By requirement from the school, all were about accounting research. Specifically, students had to propose and design a research project (e.g., and experiment or archival study) and talk about how it fits into the literature.

I’ve never seen an accounting program in the US require much research, let alone a full thesis. Some have a thesis requirement for honors students, but even that is rarely about research.

While here I also had the privilege of serving on Christian Peters’s dissertation committee. That process is a little different than in the US. The paper requirements aren’t that different, but the defense is.

First, all full professors wear their robes at the defense (I’m not a full professor, so I wasn’t allowed to wear a robe; I wore a suit). Meanwhile, Christian wore a tuxedo.

Christian had to stand for the entire hour. He got to select two other PhD students to stand behind him to support him.

The committee took turns, one by one, asking questions. Christian always responded with “Dear honorable opponent …” or “Most honorable adversary” or something like that. Then he would answer the question.

Here’s a picture of his committee.

You’ll notice that one of these things is not like the others … I am the only person who was not a full professor, not wearing regalia, and not a current or former editor at The Accounting Review (premier accounting journal). Can you say “imposte syndrome?” Haha. We had a lot of fun though.

There were about 50 spectators at the defense. After the defense, Christian took us all out for drinks and snacks. Then he took the committee, his family, and a few close friends to a very fancy restaurant. I’ve heard that a PhD defense can cost as much as a wedding all told.

Soccer (football/voetbal) is by far the most popular sport in the Netherlands. On my bucket list was to take JJ and Timmy to a game before we left.

My friend Jesse (PhD student at Tilburg, graduating this year and starting as an assistant professor at Tilburg in the fall) invites us to a N.A.C. Breda game. They lost (2-1) but it was still a lot of fun!

Unfortunately, we didn’t look up team colors before the game, and we wore the wrong color.

Timmy was a trooper. He had hurt his arm playing soccer earlier in the day. We thought it was just sprained, but it looked very painful all evening. The next morning we took him to the hospital. It was broken. So, he went to a soccer game with a broken arm (not in a cast). That’s a true fan!

At the end of the semester, the Tilburg accounting group interrupts one of the last sections of the master’s program to deliver ice cream! I was fortunate to be able to participate.

The gift was a little bit ironic in that we interrupted a class on sustainability to deliver the ice cream. Ice cream is not a very sustainable dessert. But, it was fun anyway!

The EAA Meeting took place in Helsinki, Finland. In my last post I talked about the conference. In this one I’ll talk about the area.

Most of the faculty from Tilburg went to the EAA. We were trying to figure out some fun things to do together while we were there. One colleague pushed that we should see a soccer game. Yuck! I didn’t travel to Finland to see soccer!

So, I reached out to a friend from Finland. She gave a few recommendations. The top three things I saw were the Temppeliakion kirkko, Suomenlinna (island fortress and UNESCO world heritage site), and the Nuuksio national park. With that introduction, here come the pictures!

Now for some miscellaneous pictures.

Just a heads up, this post is a little more accounting technical than most of my posts.

I’ve attended the AAA (American Accounting Association) annual meeting several times. Here’s my experience, so you can understand my expectations for the EAA:

• Huge – Thousands of attendees.
• Confusing – Multiple hotels with dozens of concurrent sessions.
• Sparsely attended – Many sessions have exactly 6 people: 3 presenters and 3 discussants (sometimes only 4 or 5 people if some play multiple roles).
• Networking – People make lists of who they want to meet and they spend their time looking for people and trying to impress the big names.
• Exclusive evening events – The most important part of the annual meeting happens outside of the scheduled program. The receptions and dinners at night are where the action is. Every year I have the Cornell dinner, the UMass dinner, and several receptions I try to go to.
• Expensive – Meeting registration is over $1000 (including membership fee), hotel is a few hundred per night, and very few meals are included in the registration fee.

The EAA annual congress was pleasantly different.

• Moderate size – There were a lot of people, but maybe only a quarter as many as at the AAA.
• Compact – All sessions were within a single campus building. We moved to a different building for meals, but everything was easy to find.
• Well attended – Every session I went to had a lot of attendees. A few were at maximum capacity (one person had to sit on the floor).
• Genuine – I didn’t feel like there was a lot of game playing. People were there for the conference, not to engage in impression management.
• Inclusive – There were a few evening events organized by the conference. These were open to everyone. Otherwise, people went out for dinner or activities on their own or with friends, but no special invitation-only after-parties.
• Affordable – The conference itself cost 500 euros, and the hotel was pretty reasonable. All lunches and the gala dinner were included in the registration fee.

Overall, I was very impressed with the EAA and I hope to go again next year!

The Netherlands have a LOT of holidays in April/May.

• Good Friday and Easter (including “Second Easter” on Monday) – University closed Friday through Monday
• King’s Day on April 27 – University closed on Thursday and Friday
• Liberation Day on May 5 – University closed
• Ascension Day on May 18 (40 days after Easter) – University closed on both Thursday and Friday
• Pentacost on May 28 and Pinksterdag (second Pentacost, called “Whitsun Monday” in England) on May 29 – University closed

Kind of makes for a fun couple of months. In the US, we don’t really celebrate most of these. Some places give a day off for Easter, but a lot don’t. None of the rest are celebrated. Most US states would see this as too much Christianity in the holiday schedule, but I didn’t get that sense at all here (even though most people aren’t religious). They were just happy for the holidays!

Our kids also had all of these off for school, plus some of them connected. We appreciated that, since it let us do our cruise and Israel trip.

It was a bit annoying on the days where we weren’t traveling that “University closed” means that faculty are not allowed on campus. I had to work on some of the holidays, so I worked from home (which is a little tricky with kids out of school). I like the holidays, but not the forced nature of the holidays.

During the course of the year here in Tilburg, everyone has had a birthday. Timmy and I had birthdays shortly after we arrived. So, we actually had the parties in Utah with family before we came. We had a little party for Linda and another for Sarah and JJ, but all were just our family.

Adelaide is too popular for that. She wanted a big party with all her friends. So, after a lot of planning, we set something up.

Quick note about her school: it’s a small school with 2 grades combined into a single class. Adelaide invited everyone in her grade plus all of the girls from the grade below hers. She also invited some friends from church.

Every single person she invited came. Every person from her grade. Every girl from the grade below her. Every person from church. It was a big party. She is popular!

We did the party at the local swimming pool. Parents dropped off their kids. We bought tickets and they all went in.

After they were already starting to get in the water, the life guard asked us if they all had their swim diploma. We said that we didn’t know. They said we needed to find out or get the kids out of the water …

Side note: In the Netherlands, swim diplomas are issued at the national level, and pretty much all kids get them.

So, we pulled the kids out of the water and had to ask them. Most don’t speak English, so we had to communicate in our broken Dutch or have Adelaide or a lifeguard translate for us.

All of the kids except one said they had their swim diploma. That one was very upset. She said that she didn’t have a diploma but she knew how to swim. We asked in English and Dutch. The lifeguard also asked in Dutch. Every time she clearly said she didn’t have a diploma.

The lifeguard gave us no choice. We had to buy her arm floaties and she had to stay with an adult. She was very angry. She yelled and cried, but there was nothing we could do. Eventually she calmed down and it all worked out. When her mom came to pick her up, I explained what had happened so she wouldn’t be surprised. She then said, “But she has a swim diploma.” I replied, “She told us she didn’t.” The mom then reminded the girl and she replied, “Oh yeah, I do have one. I forgot.”

The rest of the party went really well.

On May 11 I went to K.U. Leuven. The distance from my house to Leuven is pretty similar to the distance to Heerlen (Open Universiteit from Monday). However, Leuven is in Belgium, and international trains don’t have quite the same flexible schedule as domestic trains.

So, while I was able to do the Open Universiteit visit in a single day, I needed to stay a night in Leuven. The nice thing about staying a night, though, is that I got to explore the city the next morning!

The workshop was great. Probably one of the largest seminar audiences I’ve ever had. K.U. has a very large PhD program (sometimes taking 6+ students in a single year; most schools only take 1-2). With that big of a program, sometimes I’ve noticed people shirk a bit: they don’t read the paper, relying on others to provide comments. Not so at K.U.! Very active discussion with great comments and a typed referee report from the PhD students. Thanks everyone!

Now, Leuven itself is rich in history. Beautiful churches and old buildings, etc. In my opinion, however, the most interesting piece of history is the university library.

The library was destroyed in WW1 as retribution for alleged civilian sniper fire. It became a rallying cry: “look how the Germans burn libraries!” After the war, the allies paid to rebuild it. It remained a pretty political building, somewhat of a “rub it in Germany’s nose” sort of thing. There was even a slogan to the effect of “Germany destroys, America rebuilds.”

So, no wonder that the library was one of the first casualties of WW2.

It became another rallying cry, and after the war, American schools and other organizations donated to rebuild it. The architect wanted to engrave in stone the “Germany destroys, America rebuilds” slogan, but the university chancellor wisely replied something to the effect of, “We’ve antagonized the Germans enough at this point. Let’s put the past behind us and try for peace without being abnoxious.”

On May 8th, just a few days after my parents left, I was back to work as normal. First up was a trip to Open Universiteit in Heerlen.

Open Universiteit is a bit unusual in that its focus is nontraditional students. They don’t have any in-person students (other than PhD students): everything is online.

That means it is an exceptionally clean and quiet campus!

Open Universiteit is also a little new to the research front. They recently made some great hires and are trying to ramp up their research program. Given that background, I wasn’t expecting a lot of comments on my paper, but I was very pleasantly surprised!

We had a great discussion leading to some very helpful suggestions of how to reframe the front end to provide a more understandable story (we were trying to bite off too much in one go) and how to modify some analyses to help support that simpler story.

Overall, great visit and great feedback on the paper!