Three months have past since I started working as a full-time intern at a local accounting firm in north-side. So far I've made 8 trips (a week-long or longer) to GA since then, including one trip to Japan. I am expecting one more trip to Japan (departing US this Friday!) for a fieldwork (testing). This will be my last business trip, and my 1-year internship with this firm will end as I go back to school for a fall semester.
This internship have been quite invaluable to me, not only gaining a real experience as an auditor, but also giving me the opportunities that I could apply a lot of bits and dots that I've learned in class to the real job. I remember someone said something like this; Education that we gain at school is not necessarily helpful in a real life situation. But it has certainly been "a lot" of help to me with this internship. Let me tell you one example I just had today:
I was working on the audit steps related to the "other expenses" cycle. I needed to perform an analysis for the two pension accounts; SERP Pension and Pension Expenses (Defined Benefit Plan). There were work papers provided by the Company showing the actual pension fund amounts and the Company's general ledger prints. When I first looked at these work papers, I immediately recalled the worksheets we've used so many times in A511; Defined Benefit Plan worksheet - showing the general journal entries and the memo indicating the actual fund status. I cannot forget how much work I've done for the pension expense calculation; it was a complicated concept for me to understand at that time. But because I've worked hard in class, it was somewhat easy for me to understand the overall process that the Company did for its pension fund recording, and I could complete the steps without confusion. I do remember that Prof. Hassell said that we may even never encounter the company which uses Defined Benefit Plan - because nowadays the most of the companies are leaning toward Defined Contribution Plan - , and here I did see one real life example!
This is just a small example that I had with my internship. But there have been many, many small situations where I could actually apply the concepts I've learned in class (especially the concepts from the intermediate accounting). Honestly speaking, the intermediate accounting classes were such a pain for me to get through, although, it has been a joy for me to reinforcing what I've leaned through a real life situation. I guess this "is" the value of education!
