Lee Wishing IV
Accounting & Finance
– Grove City College
Interning this past summer at GYF has been one of the best experiences of my college career. Accounting majors at Grove City College normally take auditing in the fall of their senior years. Since I just finished my junior year, I personally have not yet taken an auditing class and I didn’t know what to expect from the internship. I was hoping that I would learn a lot, gain some real word experience, and get a small glimpse of what life might look like after graduation. The internship definitely exceeded any expectations that I had!
No matter how good any auditing course is, I do not think (though I don’t know yet for sure) that it could fully prepare you for everything you will do throughout your internship. My internship experience taught me about different software options and auditing programs, performing testwork, writing tick marks and documenting my work. Classwork likely would not have prepared me to talk to the CFO or one of the head accountants at the various clients, but requesting documentation or having to ask them questions about different procedures was probably one of the most difficult things I did during my internship.
During our training, the interns were told that we would be given work that the firm would give to a first year staff and that we would be directly interacting with clients. This was definitely intimidating at first, but after a while I got used to it. The nice thing is that the staff and seniors that I worked with while out at the clients were always super friendly and helpful.
Everyone I worked with was approachable and always willing to help out. No matter how many questions I had, someone was always willing to answer them for me.
This was probably my favorite part about working at GYF. Even outside of the client engagements, everyone, from the staff to the partners were easy to get along with and fun to be around. Most days when you are in the office, everyone eats lunch together in the kitchen. There were some days when the partners would join us as well. If someone was going out to grab food they would ask you if you wanted to come along. Nobody excluded the interns or treated us any differently than any of the other staff. Working at GYF, you definitely feel like you are part of a tight-knit community.
I would like to offer two pieces of advice to future interns considering GYF:
• During your sophomore year, interview for the summer leadership program.
It is an amazing three-day program, during which you get to interact with a lot of GYF professionals, learn more about the firm and public accounting as a profession, and participate in a variety of fun teambuilding events. After attending it last year, not only was I way more informed about career opportunities in general, but I also knew that I wanted to intern at GYF.
• Ask questions – whether you are interviewing, attending an event or interning.
Not only is an interview a time for the interviewer to get to know you better, but it is also a good time for you to show that you have done some research into the firm and are also eager to know more.
Our classes at school are great, but few of them, if any, teach us about what it is actually like to work in public accounting day in and day out. Take the opportunity to learn as much as you can if you have the privilege of attending the student leadership conference.
It is especially important to ask questions as an intern. Trust me, even though we college students like to think that we have everything figured out, in all reality there is a lot of stuff that we do not actually know. Asking questions shows the team you are working with that you are actually doing the work and that you are being careful to do it correctly. It is better to ask questions if you do not know what you are doing, than to have to go back and redo everything you worked on.
These past few months as an intern at GYF have been great; however, I will soon be heading back to Grove City College to begin my senior year. I plan to graduate next May with a degree in Accounting and Finance. Upon graduation I plan to begin studying for the CPA exam, and pass as many sections as I can next summer. My internship has definitely prepared me for my future accounting career.
