Follow Up to "Making the Most of Your College Experience"

This is in response to a comment just posted by N.Rouse which is still in the process of being published and should appear soon. N. indicates that he (presuming it is a "he" - may not be!) is soon graduating yet had a poor internship experience - did not feel he got a lot of hands-on Accounting experience to to the Internist switching her practice away from Accounting into wealth management. N. is worried that he does not have a quality experience to fall back upon, and asks whether he should continue to be worried; whether to take another internship; etc.

DON'T WORRY!!!! That would be my advice.

The purpose of an internship is two-fold. One, is exposure to a job, any job, which is especially important for a student that lacks any such experience. The other is to acquire some meaningful exposure to how Accounting might in fact be practiced.

Even though you are reflective and sensitive to perhaps not getting a "real" look at practicing Accounting, it is important to reflect on what you did learn. First off, merely getting up each day and reporting to an Office is part of the Internship (as opposed to, perhaps, coming late to a class and getting away with it! Not in my classes!!!). Seriously, the learning how to interact with people and to be a responsible "citizen" is in fact a major focus of the internship: how to speak to people; how to dress; how to be respectful to a Boss as well as colleagues as well as those not at the professional level; etc. Don't underestate the importance of this.

Second, almost ALL of an Accounting job is on-the-job training. EVERY job has its in's-and out's and needs to be done just the way a particular company, a particular supervisor, wants it to be done. So just having the "theory" is indeed important if only to at least understand the language being spoken - the language of Accounting and the language of business. Thus, no one is expected to understand until one is shown - again, on-the-job training. I recall one of my first assignments was to do a bank reconciliation of a small company's corporate account. I looked at all the materials - bank statement, returned cancelled checks, the need to create the Check Disbursement's Ledger (again, a really small client!). When the partner asked me what was the matter, based on my stares, it became apparent that the checks had been issued without check numbers!!! When the Partner cursed out loud, I thought it was at me until I realized it was at the client - seems the client had been told over and over again to number all the checks and yet kept on failing to do so.

I tell you this so that you will RELAX! There is always trepedation when starting a new job. Do not let your own feelings about lacking substantive experience be a factor - unless of course you are lying and saying that you have years of experience when in fact you don't!

Always tell the truth, and be guided by that. When asked, write down and/or mention you had an Internship. Do not belittle it and simply mention what you did learn. Who knows, maybe have a familiarity with wealth management is precisely what will be needed!

Please go forward, obtain the best entry level job you can, and learn and grow from there. That's what we all do! Let me know of any follow on thoughts.

Regards, and Best of Luck and congratulations on your graduating.