To Work or Not Work….That is the Question

Some  insight from our intern Ben…

I had heard multiple times that I shouldn’t work during my senior year, that I should take my classes and spend the rest of my time enjoying my last year of school. Over the summer, I thought a lot about what I should do during my last year. Having a job would be interesting, but I am going to spend the rest of my life having a job. Maybe I should follow the advice I have been given and relax for my last year. However, I wanted to pursue an internship because I am interested in seeing how accounting works outside of the classroom. In school, we often learn very different topics relating to very different industries, all within the same week. This can make truly understanding what you are learning and how to use it very difficult. I eventually decided in favor of working during my senior year and have been working at Stephano Slack since the end of August. Working here for two months has already helped me apply the concepts that I have been learning for the past four years in ways that I thought would take a much longer period of time to accomplish. I am seeing the side of accounting that is put into practice and I am learning much more through working while taking my classes.

While the projects that I have worked on have taught me a lot, the majority of what I have learned at Stephano Slack has come through talking with the people within the company. Speaking with the interesting people such as Nicolette, Dave, or Lee, to name a few, I am always learning about the industry that I am studying. As an accounting major, I am faced with many possibilities about what I want to do with my degree. At times, it can feel like I am back at the end of high school, trying to choose from a seemingly endless amount of possibilities regarding what I want to do for the rest of my life. When learning about accounting in a classroom setting, it isn’t always easy to see how to utilize the information that is being taught, let alone how you could use it as a career. Working at Stephano Slack has given me a great insight, not only into what can be done with accounting in general, but into what I would like to do with it.

Gaining this understanding has proved to be one of the most valuable experiences that I have had while working at Stephano Slack. With the experience that I have gained through my internship, I have found that I am very interested in public accounting. I was always intrigued by public accounting, but until I began working with Stephano Slack, I never realized how much I would enjoy it. From my decision to work during the school year, I have learned about how accounting works in the real world as well as how I would like to utilize it for the remainder of my career, and that is all that I could have hoped for.