For my STEP Signature Project, I completed an internship with Deloitte & Touche LLP as an audit & assurance intern. Throughout my internship, I learned a lot about the company, its workings, accounting basics, and many communication skills. During my time at Deloitte, I would help different engagement teams complete work papers and assignments which helped them towards their goal of completing the audit before their deadline.

This internship was a big step for me in my life, not only was it my first experience with a real job, but it also gave me great insight into what a real job is. With Deloitte being my first real job, it taught me invaluable knowledge on every aspect of a true job. It taught me what matters most and how to succeed. Deloitte also helped prepare me for the real world and what to expect at the start of a career. I would like to point out three key aspects that during my time with Deloitte, helped me mature and prepare me for life after college. 

To start I would like to talk about my coworkers, Deloitte has a strong emphasis on the people side of the company and making strong relationships with your coworkers. This made a difference for me while working with Deloitte. While the work wasn’t the most intriguing and exciting, the thing that made me excited to come in every day was my coworkers. The company highly values its coworkers and the relationships they foster through working together. The friendliness and positivity in the office was something I’ve never seen before which completely changed my view on the workplace as a whole. I realized that the most important aspect of a job isn’t the pay but the atmosphere the company builds and the people you work with. I also learned that although many of the assignments could be done individually it is never a bad thing to ask for help and work together.

Second I would like to discuss the learning experiences I went through during my time at Deloitte. Going into the company I had no clue what I was going to be doing. I knew it was audit but I didn’t have much clue on what that entailed. I thought my first week would be rough since I was clueless and new to all of this. To my surprise, it was fairly easy. This was because of the people I worked with who helped me every step of the way. They explained the assignments in simple terms for me and made sure I was comfortable asking for help if I ever needed it. Later on in the job I was able to learn more and more to the point where I was working on certain parts of the audit all by myself. During this time I was able to teach people what I’ve been working on and answer questions they had for me. Deloitte not only taught me useful information about audit and the company as a whole, but it also taught me better ways to learn. Deloitte taught me to write down all my questions and not continually ask my supervisors questions. They also taught me to try to work on a problem for a certain amount of time, and then move on if I still can’t get it after a certain amount of time. These seem like fairly simple concepts but most people do the opposite when in practice. With these helpful tips, Deloitte better prepared me for the real world which made me a lot more confident for life after college. 

Lastly, Deloitte helped me prepare for life after college and going into the real world through the interactions I had at the office. Whether it was coworker, client, online, or in-person each interaction taught me something new and helped me build the essential skills I need to succeed in life. My interactions with my coworkers taught me how to ask questions, build relationships, joke around, and talk professionally when work needed to be finished. Then on the other hand my interactions with the client taught me how to professionally ask questions, send professional emails, and interact with someone when you need from them. I learned how to communicate with my peers over Zoom in a professional manner. We would have daily touchpoint meetings where we would discuss what we’ve been working on and our progress. Overall I learned how to better communicate with different groups of people in both a professional and non-professional manner. It vastly helped improve my communication skills which I consider to be essential no matter what type of work someone goes into.

This development strongly matters to me since I want to be as prepared as I can be for life after college. The internship as a whole helped me greatly improve as a person and I’m very proud of where it brought me. I was able to strengthen my communication skills, foster new relationships and networks, and learn invaluable knowledge about the field I will be pursuing. I believe this opportunity has given me the edge over a lot of my competition since I feel much more prepared for life after college than I did before this opportunity. I want to advance myself as much as I can and always keep growing and I feel like this internship with Deloitte helped build the grounds to grow from. I feel much more confident about life after college and I can’t wait to see how far I can grow with Deloitte after college.

              I performed a variety of office tasks while interning in the office of State Representative Lauren McNally. These included writing press releases and commendations, organizing lists of funding brought into the district or of contacts, reading and sorting the Representative’s mail, and other tasks. I was also occasionally asked to attend and take notes on advocacy meetings and presentations.

I think there was a moderately substantial value shift during my internship, wherein I gained a greater appreciation for “smaller things” about politics and the ways it can help people. In the absence of “larger” or more substantive legislative victories, which I discuss in more depth in the next section, it became more important than ever to take a sort of solace in these smaller victories, to learn to appreciate them as being worth the effort that was put into them. I obviously already appreciated the importance of small actions taken to help others, but I learned to individually cherish them more over the course of the internship, to not measure my/our success solely on the basis of sweeping legislative initiatives.

               While many individual legislators have wielded considerable power throughout American history, as in the cases of Lyndon Johnson or Mitch McConnell, I was instead interning for a rank-and-file Representative in the minority party. This is not to downplay in any way her commitment or her work on behalf of her district; I merely wish to illustrate the relative lack of power we had to affect Ohio’s direction. Our moderate legislative proposals were dead on arrival and our more ambitious policies were scarcely more than a fantasy. I was warned of this during my interview for the position.

               This doesn’t mean our work was worthless, though. While I was talking with Rep. McNally’s legislative aide, who served as my Consultant during my internship, we received a troubling call from a constituent. I do not recall the specifics, but she had been mistakenly billed back for several thousand dollars of benefits. Understandably, she was incredibly stressed by the whole thing, recounting her various attempts to get in contact with the right person before bursting into tears. I do vividly remember her gratitude at the aide’s efforts to ameliorate her situation, and it had a substantial impact on the way I viewed my internship going forward.

               Ultimately, I learned to take solace and enjoyment in these apparently “smaller” victories. A letter of gratitude from a constituent for a commendation that I helped write and mail out remains one of my fondest memories of the internship. I also recall being pleased with a press release from our office explaining certain important aspects of the P-EBT program, information that local journalists then hopefully conveyed to the public. These actions could hardly be considered headline news, but they were still actions I took with my limited power that positively affected people’s lives. Those actions were meaningful, and I got to experience that firsthand.

My ultimate career aspiration is to become a successful civil rights lawyer, to ideally fight towards many of those “big picture” victories on par with a Brown v. Board of Education or an Obergefell v. Hodges. However, civil rights work is rarely so successful, and the positive effects of even Brown have arguably been overstated. If I follow this career path, even at the highest level, I will certainly be beset by failures, feelings of powerlessness, and feelings of inadequacy. In those moments, the ability to take solace in smaller victories, in my attempts to help people, will be instrumental in remembering why I want to enter such a depressing occupation. This opportunity has hopefully given me the resilience necessary to stay on that path.

My STEP signature project occurred in Grandview Heights in Columbus, Ohio from January 8th through March 1st. I was placed on an engagement team in Columbus and switched halfway through to work on a team based out of Pittsburg. I was an audit and assurance intern which means that I assisted a team in ensuring our client’s financial statements were free of errors or misstatements. These 8 weeks greatly impacted my skills and understanding of my career. 

Professional growth was the most prevalent skill that happened throughout my time at EY and was the greatest thing I developed and that I learned about myself. I started this internship with little knowledge of what takes place during an audit, but I left with an abundant amount of new skills and knowledge. I developed certain skills like being inquisitive, and making sure questions were being asked so that I could fully complete tasks the right way without any errors. Along with being inquisitive and asking questions I learned ways to reach out professionally to different people including our client to gain more information. While receiving feedback from the senior on my team, I also received a shortcut sheet for Excel. These shortcuts were some things I had never heard of but were essential to the rest of my internship and helped me succeed promptly. Working with a team in India allowed me to grow in ways I neverimagined. It taught me the importance of diversity and how important it is to be adaptable in the corporate world. It was difficult to communicate with coworkers on the other side of the world, but helped me grow professionally. My assumptions about the corporate world have also changed immensely. Going into this I thought that there would be little flexibility and people working their tails off without any reward. At EY, that is not the case. People would walk around and take breaks by getting coffee or just talking to others. There would be paid lunches to better get to know our teams and many other benefits. These are just some ways I grew professionally and excelled during my internship experience.

Several instances during my internship led me to grow and change my assumptions about the corporate world. I learned about things I can work on and further develop skills through the feedback I was given. Every two weeks I got feedback from a senior on my team, and they gave me tips on things I could improve or work on. This was essential to my growth because it taught me what I was doing poorly and how to fix these small errors. Feedback was vital to my professional growth. My change in the stigma around the corporate world stemmed from my coworker’s interactions. They taught me that is okay to take breaks and go get lunch or that If you communicate properly it is okay to schedule doctor appointments or take time off. 

My experience during my internship at EY was one of transition and growth, and it was important for several reasons. First of all, it has improved my capacity to adapt, which is important in both personal and professional settings. Auditing consists of being able to adjust to different circumstances, collaborate with a variety of different teams,  and handle challenging situations. My confidence and skill set have increased as a result of this transition, enabling me to succeed in circumstances. I also expanded my knowledge of corporate culture, which was essential to both my academic and long-term career goals of wanting to be an auditor. It will be crucial for me to have a solid ethical basis and an awareness of company culture as I seek a career in audit. All things considered, every moment I experienced during my internship at EY has impacted both my personal and professional development. It has given me priceless views, abilities, and insights that will help me with my future professional aspirations, personal projects, and academic achievements.