Sarah's NYC Summer

My final week as a PwC intern was pretty busy. On Monday I listened to a webcast hosted by Becker to give us more information and tips about the CPA. I learned a lot of things I didn't know before and now I feel more prepared to start the process. Currently, my plan is to start studying a couple hours a week during the spring semester and take my first exam once I graduate. Then, I'll take the other three exams over the summer. I want to stay in Columbus from Monday to Thursday during the summer so I can study at the library without getting distracted at home. PwC also pays for the Becker books and resources which is a big help. After that call I went into a short meeting to talk about the walkthrough I'm going to sit in on on Thursday. I couldn't really follow the whole thing but it was my first look into what a walkthrough will be like and the type of questions to ask. On Tuesday morning we had an intern breakfast which included a panel. The DA that helped me with

This entire week we were at the client. I like being at the client because everyone is in the same room and most people all get lunch together. This week people were being very funny and were telling funny stories about coworkers and the people at the client. On Monday afternoon we had a team meeting led by our partner going over the results of a firm-wide survey. The survey asked several questions about PwC and how people feel about the company, about their job, and about their superiors. My team mostly focused the conversation on sticking to a flex plan during busy season and initiating an in-the-moment feedback system. It was interesting to hear the results of the survey because the results were lower than last year. It gives me a better idea of what the job is really like and now I know what to expect. After the meeting we went to our first team happy hour at a place near the Brooklyn Bridge. We got to sit outside and ordered four pizzas to split, including an alligator pizza which

During the entire week of the 4th of July, PwC closes its offices, which means I got an entire week off. On the first weekend, I went to the New York City Pride March. The march this year celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots in NYC. I went to an exhibit at the library and learned more about the riots and the evolution of the gay community in public throughout the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The march was a lot of fun. We first went through the company booths and got a ton of free things- mostly rainbow colored. Then we watched the first two hours of the parade. It was mostly city of New York organizations. Because it was so hot, we went back to the dorm and hung out until about 5 when we decided to watch the parade again. When we went back out, there were a lot more floats we recognized of brands and companies. We even got to see the cast of Queer Eye on the Netflix float and Neil Patrick Harris and his family. The next day we met up with some friends from Ohio State at th

This week was mostly spent at the office. I had a couple big tasks throughout the week that took me a big part of the day to complete. Also, this week was a big focus on digitizing and automating some of our processes. On Monday I went to the client with a Senior Associate to work on Meeting Minutes. This client doesn't send us a copy of their meeting minutes so we had to go in person to type out the minutes for almost 30 meetings in Q2. We were typing for an hour straight and by the end of it my hands were killing me. Since I didn't know what information was important and what wasn't I ended up typing everything up from the minutes. On Tuesday our team had a quick brainstorming session to discuss what automations and bots we can create. Everyone was assigned a couple to start working on and to compile questions for the digital accelerators. I continued to work on automation I was working on and was able to answer some of the questions I had early just by googling for h

After a long weekend with my family, I wasn't too excited to head back to work, but luckily I had some things to do. During this week I was mostly focused on walkthroughs, meetings with the client to discuss and understand the processes and controls they have in place. I went through the prior year workpapers to get a better understanding of the walkthroughs and compiled a list of evidence that was obtained in prior year that would probably need to be obtained this year as well. On Wednesday we had our annual team meeting. Our engagement team went over things that happened in prior year that went well and also some pain points and how to improve. They also talked about a tentative schedule of the audit and the importance of finishing the planning portion of the audit before busy season begins in January. Even though I am only here for the summer, I got a good grasp on what the rest of the year looks like. I had to leave the meeting early because I had an intern volunteering eve

Coming back from the Fourth of July break was still a bit slow. A couple of people were back from their vacations, but there were still a good amount out of office. Things started to slowly pick up at work. I was assigned more workpapers and had some event on my calendar to look forward to. Wednesday was a pretty busy day. It started off with a partner/intern roundtable. All of the insurance interns sat around 6 tables while 6 partners went around to each table and had a conversations with us. The partners talked about diversity and inclusion, committees to join, advice for standing out during the internship, transitioning to full time, and the insurance market. I learned about the partners and got a clearer idea of things to expect during full time. That afternoon was the insurance market practice meeting. It was two and a half hours of leaders in the insurance practice talking about the previous year and what we learned and advice and tips for the upcoming fiscal year. It was coo