You may have never heard of Bryan Steinhauer but this 26-year-old's story is about to make you feel guilty for every single stupid excuse you ever gave for not being able to pass the CPA exam.
You see, Bryan was beaten into a coma back in 2008 when he got into a barroom brawl with former Serbian college basketball player Miladin Kovacevic. Kovacevic fled the country and blah blah blah, eventually he was brought to justice, the Serbian government paid Steinhauer's family $900,000 for cockblocking a trial and Kovacevic was sentenced to 25 months in prison. He was released late last year.
Apparently, all this started because Steinhauer groped the girlfriend of one of Kovacevic's buddies at the bar. At the time, he was a stout 130 pounds soaking wet, with Kovacevic weighing in at a whopping 260 lbs. One witness to the attack said Steinhauer “was out after two hits but they kept hitting and kicking him.”
“Out of nowhere, I wake up in a hospital. I can’t move, can’t talk. I’m like, ‘why,’” Steinhauer told WCBS 880.
He spent 3 months in a coma and had to learn how to walk and talk all over again. Undeterred, he went on to complete college AND get hopping on passing the CPA exam just two years later:
Steinhauer, 24, is about to start work at the accounting firm KPMG, capping a comeback that hospital officials call "mind-boggling."
"I'm ready to move on to the next stage of my life, doing what I was meant to do," a beaming Steinhauer told the Daily News. "It's the biggest thing for me – to reclaim my life."
Steinhauer has reason to be confident. Last week, he found out he passed the first part of the notoriously difficult CPA exam – no small feat for someone who suffered brain injuries so severe his memory was erased.
"I studied for two months straight, every single day," said Steinhauer, who majored in accounting at Binghamton. "I had no remaining knowledge from college. I had to learn everything from scratch."
I'm sure there is some easy joke about brain injuries and KPMG but this is a feel-good story and we are so not going to go there.
SO, as if all that weren't enough (he did end up passing all four parts), Steinhauer is now working on running a half-marathon five years after he was nearly beaten to death and rose from the ashes like a glorious number-crunching phoenix.
“The first step in my recovery was to get running,” Steinhauer said, adding that his next goal will be to run a full marathon. “Never give up on yourself, just keep on trying.”
You hear that, you slack asses? JUST KEEP ON TRYING.
