Credit: sxc.hu/hvaldez1

At my university, all undergraduate business majors are required to take two introductory accounting classes, one in financial accounting and one in managerial accounting. I have worked as a tutor for both of these classes for about 4 semesters now, and it is the best student job I’ve ever had.

Tutoring accounting is a great part-time job to have as a student. It is interesting to work with so many students, rewarding to help them, and pays pretty well. I mostly worked through my university’s Academic Enhancement office, which provides the services free to students, so does not pay tutors exceptionally well. However, I also tutored privately and charged about $15 an hour, which is better pay than most part-time student jobs in this area.

Just because you are a good accounting student does not mean you will be a good tutor. I was lucky to get started tutoring through my university. They provide some training, and you are seen as more legitimate to the students you tutor.

Tips for Tutoring Accounting

A lot of tutoring is really explaining the same concept several different ways. When I tutor accounting, I’ll use algebra, pictures, examples . . . basically, the professor can only explain it one way. Your job is to explain it in a different way, and chances are, one of the ways will work better.

Keep in mind, just because you hit on an explanation that works really well for your student, that doesn’t mean it’ll make sense to everyone. (Although I would still try it out, if it really helped clear up a concept for someone.)

Sometimes, you don’t even need to explain it differently than their professor did. With one of the classes I tutor, I will go over the same examples their professor already showed them in class, but since I can move slower and give them a chance to ask questions, they can then follow the problem much easier than in a lecture.

Getting Started in Tutoring Accounting

Before you start charging students for your tutoring services, try tutoring accounting for free to a friend or two, especially in their first week of financial accounting when they don’t understand what a t-account or an asset is. You may find it hard at first to explain it to them in a way they understand. Eventually, through attempting to explain it, you’ll figure out how to make it make more sense.

sxc.hu/chappy14

My last couple of posts about the end of my internship have gotten quite a bit of attention, Thank you as well to everyone who links to me!

The reviews and comments on the posts sparked a lot of discussion about how recruiters and potential employers view blogging, as apparently not many interns out there are interested in sharing their experiences the way I have!

I’ve been involved with social media for a long time now, starting with Livejournal and DeviantArt at the beginning of high school. In fact, I still stay in touch with some people that I first got to know through DeviantArt.

There is something that appeals to me about blogging and connecting to so many other people just by searching for shared interests. It is very rewarding to know that even one person got something valuable out of my experiences (besides myself of course!)

I Can't Hide. sxc.hu/sande2

I know that I can’t rely on anonomity in this blog, as much as I can go out of my way not to link to my full name, etc on here, so I do have to pay attention to what I write. However, from the recent responses I’ve gotten, I know that there are people and firms out there who are just as excited about blogging and social networking as I am.

I had a great conversation with my father today about his views on blogging and online networking. I told him that I was a little nervous about the fact that I seem to be unique in blogging about my accounting internship, but that I really enjoyed being involved in this new world of networking.

My dad told me that when he was studying engineering, 40 years ago, the university got ahold of two Wang computers (think today’s TI-83 calculator). The students had the chance to use them, but you know what? None of them did. And look at where computing went from there.

Maybe some employers will shy away from the fact that I have a blog, but I hope that the ones that are pumped up about social networking will see it as a positive point about myself!

Photo by TheAlieness GiselaGiardino @ Flickr

I got a cold last week, so I took a day off work and just slept the whole day. It was awesome. But I felt a bit lazy about actually going back to work. Thursday and Friday were pretty slow days for us interns, and then sure enough, checked my work schedule last night to find out I’ve been pulled off this client as of Wednesday.

I actually freaked out a little about that–I’m so worried about what happens if I don’t get a job offer out of this, since I’m planning on taking out some sizeable loans for school next year. I’ve calmed down since then, especially since I found out that several of the other interns are also unassigned, and also that we’re supposed to all get assigned somewhere for next week.

Anyway, I haven’t posted here since I’ve been sick, but I have been posting on my personal blog, and drawing and thinking a lot. Sometimes I just don’t think I can do accounting, especially not after my lazy weekends in Athens. The people I know who live in Athens for real, not just students, may not make tons of money, but they are arty and laid back, and just seem more relaxed. But then, I realized I’d probably get bored living like that anyway.

So, no real conclusion, except that today was a fairly good day at work. I sat quietly doing e-learnings for awhile, but then was given a task by my manager to tie some numbers. It was very frustrating, because none of the numbers were grouped correctly, and I didn’t have comparable breakdowns of the data to delve into.

I kind of just wanted to give up, and wait for the people who made the one set to fix it, but my manager kept pushing me to look into it more. I was frustrated, because I felt like we didn’t have enough information to solve the problem with, but in the end, I’m glad he made me do it, because I realized that we could at least find out MORE about the problem, which would help our counterparts in Europe fix the problem more easily.

Also, I got to go and talk to one of the client staff about it. My favorite part of this job is getting to know the client. All of them seem to hate us, so I love the challenge of trying to make friends with the people we work with there. To me, that is so much more satisfying than the actual accounting work, although I like to do that too, when it works out a little better!