Job Description: Accountant (Final)

I am a spoiled kid.

Before turning eighteen, I had already traveled more of the world and dined at more award-winning restaurants than most people would in their lifetime. When my parents and I discussed coming to USC, they happily agreed with my decision even before they saw the tuition. While I was aware of my privilege, I never fully understood the value of a dollar bill.

During my first year at USC, I matured and better understood how much my parents did for me. The cost of living in Los Angeles is three times that of Hanoi, yet my parents still allow me to live comfortably. To show my appreciation to my parents, I asked to work as an accountant in my family’s business that summer.

An accountant is someone who handles the “recording and summarizing business and financial transactions and analyzing, verifying, and reporting the results.” As the definition suggests, accounting is a tedious and monotonous job. But this experience was more than just accounting. It was my first job, so I had many things to learn besides the work itself.

Below are three main aspects of my internship. Not all are work-related, but they were all valuable experiences to me:

• Playing Where’s Waldo

• Cardio Training

• Relearning my Mother Tongue

 

Playing Where’s Waldo

One of my tasks was reconciling bank statements of credit transactions–at least, that is what is on my resume. Every morning, I had to review and verify 500 or so transactions on an Excel spreadsheet to ensure they were correctly recorded. Whenever I found an error, I was to highlight the cell in bright red; I was not to miss any error. While tedious, the task seemed simple enough. If I just checked each transaction line by line, where could I go wrong?

But, by the start of the third week, I was already out of it. After spending hours every morning looking at so many strings of nearly identical numbers, they began to play tricks on my mind. When I stared at them, they twisted and morphed uncontrollably. Even when I closed my eyes, they still didn’t go away. And those pesky errors I had to find became incredibly difficult amidst this chaos. 

It reminded me of playing “Where’s Waldo” as a kid. Initially, I would diligently scan the page from left to right, top to bottom, searching for Waldo. But half of the time I played, I couldn’t find Waldo before giving up. Staring at all the minute details in the illustration overwhelmed my eyes, making made everything look like Waldo. I would question: “Is that a beach umbrella or Waldo?” The errors on the spreadsheets were my Waldos.

Cardio Training

Interns often come into internships hoping to apply what they learned in school and make a difference. But in the end, most of them get given the grunt work that their coworkers are too busy (or lazy) to do themselves. The grunt work I was given was to collect invoices from the other departments and bring them back into the office.

The office building I worked in was five stories tall, with departments scattered across each floor. But, the building had inconveniently few elevators; if I were to use them, I would have to wait up to two minutes for one to show up. So, I made the educated (in retrospect, regrettable) decision to use the stairs instead. Every day from 1:00 to 3:00 pm, I climbed up and down the stairs to collect invoices and carry them in bulk back to the office. At the end of every day, I was profusely sweating and annoyed that I had another dress shirt to take to the dry cleaner.

At least my supervisor wasn’t like my dad. If it was him, I suspect he would’ve made me walk thirty minutes in the summer sun just to buy him iced coffee from his favorite cafe every day.

Embracing Vietnamese Culture

Even though I was born and raised in Vietnam, I am much more comfortable speaking English. As a result, during my first few weeks at work, I was scared to talk to my coworkers. Everything about how they spoke felt new to me: their mannerisms, use of slang, and pop-culture references. I had to carry around a notebook, where I jotted down new words I learned, just to keep up in conversations.

But, as the weeks passed, I realized my fear of my coworkers was unwarranted. My coworkers were always patient and caring no matter how often I stumbled on my words or misunderstood what they were saying. They didn’t just teach me more about Accounting to help me improve my job. They showed me their favorite V-pop songs and got me into listening to an entirely new genre of music. They took me out to eat and drink with them at restaurants and bars I had never visited before.

I learned to enjoy their company, whether we were making small talk in our cubicles or having our lunch break at a street-side stall. I no longer needed my notebook full of Vietnamese vocabulary to have conversations. 

Passive Sentences: 4.0%

Flesch Reading Ease: 66.2

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 8.0