Wardle and Work

Being that I am still not sure what I want to do with my career, this might be a tough prompt for me to write about. I am currently an accounting major but I'm thinking about switching some time in the near future. To what, I'm not sure. This being said, I'll just assume that I will have some sort of business related occupation. I'll start by talking about the internship I had this summer. At the beginning of break I was searching as hard as I could for an entry-level internship, but was having no luck. I don't have much work experience so it was being tough for me to get some calls back. I could have just applied for a restaurant or retail place, but I figured it would be a better idea to try to gain some experience in my field of interest. Finally, one of my friends told me that their dad was looking to hire somebody to be an intern at his consulting firm. This seemed like a great opportunity, so I jumped on it.

The office environment was completely different from what I'm used to. I had to dress up in business casual attire, stay diligent, and most importantly, be professional. As a person my natural instinct is to do things slowly. I talk pretty slowly and my movements generally are not as up tempo as a lot of other people. I soon found that sleep-walking through the day was not something I could do at this new job. I was a part of a system bigger than myself, and I needed to carry my weight. I made a conscious attempt to be more energized (with the help of coffee, of course), and tried to get as much work done in as little time as possible. The only problem with this experience was that I was pretty much only doing grunt work the entire time. This included scanning documents and copying/pasting stuff into excel. Not the most fun job in the world but I made some money and its something to put on my resume.

It was amazing to me how different my identity became once I stepped into the office. It wasn't like we were forbidden to talk or joke around every once in a while, but the intensity and pressure of pulling my weight definitely caused me to become a lot different of a person. I would get home from work and hang out with my friends, and every night I would feel myself decompressing and releasing all the stress from the day. I can imagine this is how a lot of people feel after a hard day's work. Once I get into the real world, I can see this new identity becoming an even bigger part of my life. More responsibilities, more stress, and more productivity. I think if I finally get in the habit of being productive and getting my stuff done early, that will free up a lot of my time and I won't have to worry about deadlines hanging over my head like a storm cloud.

If I do end up sticking with accounting, I will definitely have to adjust the way I naturally write. First of all, accounting is all about getting rid of all the fluff and getting straight to the point. Balance this, balance that, and what do we have. When writing reports to upper management, they aren't going to want to read a novel about the company's financial statements. They have too much on their plate to deal with that. They are going to want a short, to the point summary. This is something I'm going to need to get used to. In school we have been taught only the five-paragraph essay format, something that won't really help for being an accountant. Instead, I need to be able to pick out the main points, and organize them in a clear, concise way. Honestly, this is part of the reason I am thinking about switching. I want to find a business related occupation that also allows me to write in creative ways. This way, my writing preferences will be satisfied and I still get to fulfill my goal of making it in the business world. This may be a pipe dream, but in today's world there are so many options and routes to take that I think I will be able to figure it out somewhere along the way.