2020-21 Year-in-Review

The 2020-21 academic year was a year of discovery for me, culminating in my decision to study accounting. After a couple of months of self-reflection, I came to realize that accounting was right for me: I like math and analytics and I enjoyed doing a similar role in one of my classes where we pretended to be entrepreneurs. However, I was torn between studying accounting and finance. The event that solidified accounting as the right choice for me was, oddly enough, hearing my parents talk about the lady who does their taxes. I pictured myself in her role and thought something along the lines of: “Hey, I can do that. Wouldn’t it be neat if I helped people and businesses with their financial documents?” The change over the past year from deciding to transfer out of the civil engineering program and into the accounting program was the most impactful event that happened to me over the past year.

 

That decision has had the effect of changing several of my career and academic goals. In the short term, I need to meet with my academic advisor to discuss how far along I am in my new major. I had taken several elective courses in the Lindner College of Business prior to officially transferring into the accounting program, and I am a little bit lost as far as progress towards a BBA degree goes. My current progress doesn’t line up well with the major “map” that I found on the Lindner College of Business website, and I don’t know which of my previous credits will count towards the 150 hours needed to sit the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam. Additionally, I would like to land a Lindner Professional Experience in accounting sometime before I graduate. An accounting internship would look good to potential employers (or at least better than my engineering internships would) and I would get to experience some of what I could do working as an accountant.

 

In the long term, I would like to earn my CPA accreditation and start working for a small-to-medium-sized accounting firm. For the type of accounting that I would like to do, it is a necessity to be a CPA. My choice to work for a smaller firm is simple: I prefer the more intimate feel of a smaller office and the (often) better workplace culture. Ideally, in five years, I would be reviewing somebody’s or some corporation’s financial statements in an office somewhere quiet, but where others are not too far away.