Heather Vizino
Accounting – Geneva College
People say you can never truly understand something until it happens to you. This is why I have such a hard time explaining to people what I do as an accounting student. In fact, I can honestly say that I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I selected the major three years ago, during my senior year of high school. There is so much more variety and skill involved in the field than it gets credit for. Even I didn’t fully understand what I was studying…until my internship this summer.
My assignments and experience at GYF have taught me job skills that no class,
no textbook, and no professor could ever prepare me for.
Albert Einstein said it best. “The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. While these last six semesters of undergraduate work have no doubt taught me the ins and outs of debits, credits, journal entries, financial statements, and the many components that make up a business, this knowledge is only about 30% of the job that CPAs perform daily. In fact, I learned more about accounting in my first week as an intern than I have in the first three years of my classes combined.
As it turns out, there’s much more to the profession than its stereotype portrays, and every day I am surprised by the unique set of skills that are required by the job. Who knew that so much networking, marketing, and communication would be involved in a field that is known for numbers, logic, and problem-solving? There are far more soft skills, as well as technical skills needed, and there is no other way to learn them than by practice. After being placed directly in the field and performing the work of an entry-level staff person, my internship experience has more than prepared me for the job that I will be doing upon graduation.
GYF has also provided an environment in which I am encouraged to take initiative, to earn responsibility, and to create invaluable opportunities to grow in the field. Staff, seniors, managers, and partners have not only graciously helped me learn as an intern, but have also invested in me as a professional and have been influential in developing and shaping my career path.
I’ve appreciated the freedom and resources that they’ve given me to create my own path and to seek out work that I was interested in helping with or learning more about. One of the assignments that made my internship unique was getting to assist the Business Valuation group with various projects, while primarily being part of the Audit team. Getting to experience another aspect of the field allowed me to gain greater appreciation for the scope of services that the firm provides to our clients.
If someone asked me if my internship was what I expected, I would say no, absolutely not. To me it was more than just an internship! It was an important piece of my college career that that has made the rest of it meaningful and relevant…not to mention a huge jump start to my professional career as well!
