Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

Touch down! First week done…

Hello, again! I hope you’re well.

First week interning for Junior Achievement of New York was quite nice! JA New York has a great team and I knew a few of them prior to joining the team, since I participated in a few of their programs in high school.

You know, the only thing I don’t like about starting a new job or internship is you have to answer the same questions for every person you meet: where do you go to school, what are you studying, what are your plans, how’s your summer been so far. I’m a conversationalist, but I often feel like a robot, to say the least. You also have to wait a few days to get your fancy ID.

As a member of the Finance & Administration team at JA New York, our primary focus is the audit that is to take place this September. This week, much of my tasks included reconciling the primary bank account, recording invoices to be paid (accounts payable), and then placing them into Peachtree Accounting Software. This was all on excel! Thank goodness for FME and Intro to Financial Accounting!

I learned a great deal and a few things I learned this past year were reinforced. For example, in FME, I learned the importance of a fiscal year, or fiscal period as a time frame or recording period is very crucial and is heavily important in the work world. Also, did you know that the cost of items within a company (i.e., supplies) is allocated by department based on the number of members in that department? I thought that was really cool!

In terms of my other summer happenings, this Wednesday I went to a Microsoft Office workshop sponsored by my career and professional development organization, The Opportunity Network and Centerbridge. My skills in excel are enhanced! All I’m going to say is I love pivot tables!

This past Thursday morning, I was honored to be asked to speak to the rising freshmen at my Alma mater, The High School of Economics & Finance. The freshmen are currently in a summer bridge program sponsored by The Moody’s Foundation. It was very humbling, invigorating, and it made me feel old! Here’s a collage of the event.

Speak@Eco71113

To top the week off, my Supervisor at JA gave me this Friday off since he was working from home – splendid! Friday evening, I had the chance to attend a networking event for Babson summer interns in NYC sponsored by this awesome group of alumni, The Black Affinity Network.

One of my favorite highlights of the night was speaking to Mikki Wosencroft’99; she said: we (Babson students and alumni) have the best mental training in the world…we are able to solve any business problem of any kind and we can apply our skills to anything…a school with MBA Caliber at the Undergraduate level. Go Babson!

That’s all folks. Until next time,

Shatiek