Trevor Tuxill
Accounting – Grove City College
Coming into this internship, the GYF HR Director told us a number of things to help prepare us for the experience, but one thing she said has stuck with me through the entire process. She told us, “public accounting is all about flexibility.” She was absolutely right! There may be times when you are scheduled to work at a client site for entire week, but you finish your assignments early or the client’s schedule changes, so you head to the office to work on other assignments that were not on your original schedule for the week.
There are countless opportunities that continuously arise to be able to learn new things
The best way to be sure that you get the most out of your time at GYF is to consistently make yourself available to the seniors and managers when you are not working on an assignment. You never know what kinds of jobs you may have delegated to you. Throughout the summer, I was able to work on a variety of special projects, a few with a partner, another at a client by myself, and several others experiencing a different area of work in marketing.
While some people may want to know and plan their schedules completely in advance, this is not always possible in a service industry. Because we are working for the clients, the auditor’s schedule needs to adjust to the client’s timetable. I learned that by being flexible about how my time was utilized, I was able to complete more in a day, learn more from my assignments, and experience a wide variety of projects.
So if you’re thinking about an internship in public accounting, try to keep an open mind going into it and be willing to jump from task to task. It will take some patience and adaptability, but the payoff is most definitely worth it.
