How did I measure the success of the work I did while I was an intern? What did I learn from this?I think I can measure my success with the amount of time I put towards getting work done. There was never a time when I wasn't working. I always had something to do, but in the off chance that there was, I always checked with my mentor or someone from the Team Building Committee to see if there was something to do. I apply that same kind of work ethic into school and my other job as well. It always feels weird if I have nothing to do. My mentor has said if I find myself in that position, I could always do school work or study for the SAT/ACT. Otherwise, I've been very active throughout internship and the products that have come out of it should showcase that well. How was my work as an intern meaningful to my education?Going into this, I knew working in this kind of industry wasn't something I was going to do. I didn't want to let that affect me gaining anything from my internship, however, so I pushed that aside and looked at the positive side of things. This internship has given me a lot of knowledge about how businesses run from the inside and how to own properties as well. Since I want to become a veterinarian and own my own hospital/clinic, I'm going to be needing to know how to manage a property and things like that. Working here has given me an insight into how that would work and interviewing different department members along the way has also helped, especially someone from legal. They helped me understand what most of the terms that were being thrown at me and wanted me to know what I'm talking about instead of reciting what I've heard. Seeing how the departments work in general is also super helpful. The employees are basically the skeleton or the structure of any company, and seeing the team-work and collaboration has shed a lot of light on what goes on in an actual company. Every company needs a core-structure, and this company's structure is solid. They're all passionate about what they do and really believe in this company. I strive to have that in my own workplace someday. What qualities or characteristics did I see in the people around me that I want to develop in myself? Why?The collaboration with each other is something I envy. The amount of people skills required for this line of work really surprised me. I didn't know you needed good relationships to do well in this job. Since it's an office job, I never really imagined that people needed to actually talk a lot to each other, let alone people outside of the company. Employees have to always keep each other up to date on what they're doing and if they need help. They also reach out to tenants if need be. In my personal life, it's hard for me to talk to others if I need help, and that's definitely a skill I want to gain. What new appreciations did I develop while working as an intern? Why?While talking is a major part of this job, you don't see it happen very often. The office itself is actually really quiet and whispering seems extremely loud. I'm the kind of person that never stops talking and can't work in silence. Thank God for ear buds, otherwise I would have driven myself crazy in this silent cubicle of mine. I hear other people talking around me all day, but honestly, I'm still not comfortable doing that yet. Whenever I talk to my mentor or anyone else that comes to check up on me, I always whisper. I'm not used to it and it completely caught me off guard. It's something that makes me think I probably wouldn't do well in this kind of job.
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For this week's blog post, we were required to pick 5 images that we were going to use in our final photo essay. These are some of the pictures I'm going to use in mine. Self-Advocacynoun
Self-advocacy in the workplace is essential to not getting pushed around by unfair superiors or when you need support with various tasks. For me, I've definitely needed to ask a lot of questions about what I'm doing and if I'm doing the right thing. The project I'm doing right now requires me to reach out to other employees constantly to check in with them. They had to tell me what I had to do and wanted it done in a specific way as well. Because of this, I was always emailing them and double-checking that I was doing everything the way they wanted it to get done. I've also had to reach out to I.T quite a few times for when something on my computer wasn't working and making it impossible for me to do the work I needed to get done. I think the most embarrassing part about that was a little game of phone-tag I played with one of the people in I.T. He had called me when I was out at lunch and I had missed the call. When I called him back to see what he wanted, he was now out of the office. For the rest of the afternoon I had waited for his call, but eventually ran out of time because I had to leave for the day. When I came back the next day, I saw two more missed calls from him. I waited until 10:00am to call him again, and he had finally picked up. It took a while, but eventually I got the program running so I could get to work. While working here I've also seen self-advocacy in other employees that work here. I've participated in department meetings and in those meetings every person in the department talks about what they're doing this month or what they need help on. It's really interesting to see a group of people work together from the outside, especially for this company. The people here are really closely knit in their departments and everyone has each other's backs. One of the people in the meeting had been confused about a new program the company's running, and everyone had pitched in the help them understand more. Memorable Intern I'd like to think that just by me being here and meeting with some of the people is memorable in itself. Most of the people I've talked to think it's really cool that our school has us do internships, and most of the questions I've gotten have been about my school in general. They found it interesting how we take 4 weeks off from school to be immersed in a career and I've even had a person say that they were thinking of sending their kid to High Tech, and this made them want to do it even more. The company in general doesn't really get high-school interns (especially unpaid ones) so me being here is a first. They had to figure out a lot of legal things to see if they could even get me to work here with the work-load I'm doing. If I were basing this off of the paper we were given, I am following the advice. One of the things I'm definitely following is showing up on-time or early. Every day I'm scheduled to come in at 9:00 am, but I've been getting here around 8:30 instead. I've also showed up to a meeting place 5 minutes before the meeting is supposed to start just in case. I'd rather be early than risk being late.
My Plan: Ever since we started internship, I was always a little confused as to what I would do for a project at a place that deals with realty and properties that they own. Since I was stuck on this, I went to my mentor to collaborate with him and brainstormed a few ideas with him. What I came up with was to do a two part project. The first part of the project is going to show what I did for the Team Building Committee here at Realty Income. The TBC is basically a group of employees that come up with events that help employees from all departments become connected and make sure that work relations are strong since that's what runs this company. The event I'm helping with is called a REITERY. Realty Income, as I may have mentioned before in previous blog posts, is a REIT company. REIT itself stands for "real restate investment trust." A REIT company lets investors get real estate exposure in their stock portfolios. For this event, I'm going to be creating centerpieces that are going to be at every table. The centerpieces themselves are going to be boxes with artwork made by Piet Mondrian as the design. Originally I was going to make 20 separate designs, but we couldn't find enough artwork that would work for what the committee wanted me to do. Now I'm creating 20 centerpieces with 10 different designs (each design is going to be displayed twice). For each design, I had to go through and make sure the quality of the picture was good. If it wasn't, I put the picture in an editor and had to smooth out the colors to improve the overall quality. After that I had to size the picture correctly. I had just finished all the designs yesterday and now I'm onto making the boxes they're going to be on. The next step after that is to put the actual designs on them. The second part of the project is going to be a presentation about why people should invest in Realty Income. This week I'm going to be meeting with a person from each department within the company and seeing what their department does. I'm also asking why they think people should invest in the company so I can include what the employees think of the company in my presentation. During my time here I've also taken notes on the 2017 Annual Report the company has and reading about the company itself, which I'm also going to include in my presentation. Skills and Support I'll Need: For this project to be "awesome," I'm definitely going to need the information I gather from the meetings I have planned. In order to do this, I need communication skills, interviewing skills, and note-taking skills. During an interview, you need to be able to write down notes extremely fast and keep up with the person you're interviewing, plus make sure that you aren't just staring down at your paper the entire time while taking notes. This is something I'm still working on and I'm going to get a lot of experience with it over this next week. My mentor is definitely really helpful since he got my interviews in the first place. I could have possibly made these interviews myself, but it was definitely made easier by him. Other than that, this project is on me. If I can't schedule my time well enough, I'm not going to do well. I need to make sure I use my time wisely.
Connecting Internship to School I don't have many questions about my internship since everything seems really straight forward. Most of my time is spent taking notes on the 2017 Annual Report which is basically a public report about the highlights of the year and has data from the company's sales and properties. Another thing I'm spending a lot of time on is creating the 20 centerpieces for the Team Building Committee's event at the Marriott Grand Ballroom. I've been trying to find similar designs that aren't extremely different from each other, but a lot of them are either low quality pictures or the wrong size. Currently I'm planning a meeting with someone in the committee so they can show me how they want me to size everything. Doing this project for the Team Building Committee and researching/annotating the Annual Report reminds me a lot of work we do at school, especially the project portion of the work I'm doing. Organizations mission/purpose & skills I need to develop: While working here, I've learned that the employees really take pride in the company and what they're doing. They aren't obligated to always support the company, but they do anyways because they believe this company really is the best. I've never witnessed employees so devoted to the company they work for, and the loyalty I'm seeing is incredible. From all the talk about the company, I've learned the history and the purpose of it. As I said in the previous blog post, this company started with just one Taco Bell that worked extremely hard to grow into the large publicly traded company they are today. You can still see the determination to excel even more in the work the people here are doing. The company is proud of where they are today but still strive to be better. They're always figuring out ways to improve the way they work and fixing previous issues that got in the way of that. A skill I can take away from this is exactly that. I need to want to get better and follow through with it, not just do what's expected of me. How I get to and from internship:Every morning I take the the exact same route to get to school (78 East, 15 South, 56 East). Each highway I take, unfortunately, is always heavy with traffic, so I end up blasting music in my car while I wait for things to get moving. The same thing goes with the way home and the traffic patterns are the same for specific days. I leave later on Monday/Wednesday mornings, so I run into heavier traffic than Tuesday and Thursday. Since I leave a lot later than usual on Friday, I hit the tail end of traffic, so it takes me about half the time it would usually take me to get to my internship.
Who I Interviewed:Name: David Nguyen Personal Relation: Mentor, Uncle Job Title: Property Accountant Supervisor Duties and ResponsibilitiesMy mentor works in property accounting, and that means he has a lot on his plate. One thing he does is maintaining the company's fixed assets. A fixed asset is basically a long term asset that provides benefits overtime rather than immediately. It also spreads the expense of the asset over multiple years. Each month the company buys properties and my mentor records the acquisition of the properties and creates the fixed assets relating to the acquisition. He also buys and creates assets (called additions) through invoices that the company pays for and creates assets through those additions. Another major responsibility is selling properties. He records dispositions of the properties and disposes fixed assets related to the sold properties. Calculating and reconciling the depreciation and amortization expenses is another job he has to do. Supervisors like himself also have to keep track of the other members of their department (staff and senior members) and review their work. There's also additional reporting that has to be done which is basically helping with other reports from various departments. What is the purpose of this organization?This company is known as the monthly dividend company - this means that they create a steady monthly dividend return which gives investors assurance that this company will maintain the value of their investment. What should I know about this organization? Knowing a brief history about the company is a good place to start helps you see the culture of the company. This company started extremely small with one Taco Bell and developed a good model of steady income to create a good investment and helped it grow into the publicly traded company that it is. They want it to feel like that little company in Escondido that strives to be successful than the billion dollar company it is. I'm going to learn how all the departments work separately but with a common goal to better this company in the interviews that I do with different staff members. Why did he choose to work at Realty Income?He originally moved from Phoenix to San Diego and took a job at TRC, but they were relocating to Northern California and he couldn't follow them. One of the people who worked at TRC (who is now my mentor's boss) got a job at Realty Income and, because he worked well with her at the previous company, she recruited him to come work with her. He also wanted to work at R.I because the company has a very good reputation. When he interviewed and met with the people who worked here, everyone seemed like people he;d want to work with (smart, intelligent, and easy going). Having a good working relationship with coworkers was very important to him. How important is getting along with other people in this career?Working at Realty Income or any other business like this, you need to work well with others. They'll be more willing to work with you and won't ignore your emails or not work as fast to get work done for you. It's good to have a good working relationship with coworkers because you never know when you'll need to reach out to them just like he needed to with his boss. The good relationship he had with her helped him get a job. To be successful in this career, you have to be able to work well with others since this is a team-based organization. Employees don't just work in their own departments, but work with various other departments as well. You need to want to continuously improve and strive to do better. It isn't working on one task and doing that one task forever. What is a typical work day like?A typical work day includes reviewing invoices for payment approval, reviewing prior month issues to be resolved before next month’s end closing, review current process for improvement, discuss projects with the team (process improvements, reporting requests from other departments, etc). They also do the month end close process where you ensure all transactions for the month have been posted to the general ledger (purchases of new properties, disposals of old properties, rental income that’s been received, and all bills have been paid). They also reconcile the general ledger to supporting documents (compare to rent schedules, bank statements, mortgage statements, etc) and prepare analysis reports to ensure the month end figures are reasonable. What skills and training are necessary for your position?You need an accounting degree. He has a CPA (Certified Public Accounting license). This isn’t required, but preferred. It’s additional certification. They look for people with a good skill level in Microsoft Office. As supervisor, you need to have a understanding and being able to work with your staff (communication and personal skills). Math is just basic (add, subtract, multiply, divide). You do have to do research (accounting research - either because they’ve hit a new situation they need to figure out how to handle, or any new pronouncements and standards that come out). They normally write up memos of how those things affect the company. What other advice do you have about working here?"To work here, just understand what everyone does and see the importance of each person’s role. You need to realize that wherever you work, hopefully your work also matters and plays a role in the big picture of the company." Do you like your job?"Yes, I like my job and think it’s a good company that values their employees." This includes things like half day Fridays and team building committee that organizes events for the company and helps boost moral and coworker relations. "They really value their employees and the work is challenging. I get to think, have opinions, and have people listen to my opinions."
Something that struck me about the workplace was how busy it was. On my first day I already had four meetings (company introduction, I.T setup and introduction, department meeting, and a project discussion with the Team Building Committee). When I did my career day here I thought it would just be an office job where you sit at a cubicle doing all the paperwork. Now that I'm immersed into the workplace, I realized just how much work the employees actually do here. They're constantly changing their schedules, adding meetings, and working on paperwork. One of the things that most people in the Financing and Accounting department are mainly focused on is the April Close. This is basically a summary of how the company did in April. Some employees are almost done, but some are just starting today. My colleagues themselves surprised me. I wasn't aware that a big company like this was actually separated very specifically and you worked with people from various places on a daily basis. During the department meeting everyone seemed really friendly and supportive of each other. When asked, they all seemed very willing to help me out with finding projects and assignments to do. It's a very welcoming group of people that I feel comfortable around. It's very similar to High Tech in a sense. Everyone does a lot of group work and they seem like a big family. When I started today, I didn't think I'd be as busy as I was or attend as many meetings as I did. Originally I thought it would mainly be an introduction to what I'd be doing over the course of the internship, but as soon as I got here, I went directly into a meeting with two new recruits. From that meeting I went to a second one to meet with I.T. The guy helped me setup everything I needed on my computers, registered me into a website the company uses, and got me an email. He even helped me figure out how to use a few of the applications that I'm going to be using during my time here. After that I had a bit of time to organize my new company email and figure out how to work things. While I was sorting through all of this, I realized how many meetings I had planned for me. My Uncle had already started reaching out to other department people and seeing if they could meet with me to discuss assignments I could do. Just next week I have 4 more meetings. At 11:00 am I went to the department meeting to listen to what the department was doing with their time. It was interesting to hear what kind of work people had to do and how the department communicated with each other. After lunch, I had about an hour to work on the 2017 Annual Report notes a bit more, but then went off to another meeting at 2:00 pm. This meeting was about an event the Team Building Committee is going to be setting up for the company. I found out that I'm going to be creating 20 centerpieces with 20 different designs all from the artist, Piet Mondrian. Pretty stressed about it even though it might seem simple. I'm excited to start doing the work people have set up for me. It seems to be all stuff I can handle and excel at. It's kind of weird, but I'm actually looking forward to having a lot of meetings as well. I've never had a calendar that was planned out meticulously and it's like a deep dive into the professional world. Just setting up all these meetings was sort of fun for me to do (especially since I do like planning and organizing things). It's satisfying for me to see a schedule laid out and to have a plan instead of not knowing what I'm going to be doing at all. Now I have a general idea of what to look out for. Although, I am a bit worried about the length of internship. When you're setting up and trying to find a place to do your internship, you don't think about the time frame that much. To me, 4 weeks seemed like a really long time, but while I was planning out my schedule I realized that 4 weeks isn't a lot of time at all. I hope I have enough time for a project and setting up a presentation for school and the presenting at my internship location as well.
My Career Day Experience For career day I had the opportunity to shadow my uncle, David Nguyen, at Realty Income. At first I was kind of worried that I wouldn't like what I would be doing for internship, but after spending a day there, I realized it wasn't going to be that bad. When I arrived, my uncle took me through a tour of the accounting department which is who I'd be doing work for the most. I met all the people who might have assignments and projects for me to do during my time at Realty Income and where my cubicle would be. I think the funniest part of the entire tour was how excited everyone was to show me the "Snack Shack" which the accounting department has kept secret from the other departments. After the tour, my uncle and I sat at his desk so he could explain what Realty Income did. Just because there are a lot of departments doing a lot of things, I'll focus mainly on what the accounting department does and the company in general.
Realty Income is a company that buys properties and sells to tenants that pay rent to them. For example, some of the property they own have different popular chains of take-out food on them. There are many different departments that take care of maintaining balances and income for properties, creating balance sheets, keeping track of the value of properties (cash, land value, property value, invoice paid, and money made), and also writing reports on the company's progress. There are 3 kinds of reports; the monthly report, the quarterly report, and the annual report. The reports are about assets, liabilities, equity (ownership), revenue, income statements, expenses, and net income. My uncle works for the accounting department within this company. A typical work day for my uncle is reviewing invoices for payment approval, review prior month issues to be resolved before next month-end closing, and review current process for improvement. The month-end closing puts everything together into one report. The report for this is called a balance sheet. It basically gets the final number for month end close and checks to make sure everything is ready for the quarterly report. The process for the month-end report is to ensure all transactions for the month have been posted to the general ledger, reconcile the general ledger to supporting documents, and prepare analysis reports to ensure the month end results are reasonable. He also meets with the accounting department team to discuss other projects like process improvements, reporting requests from other departments, etc. Work policy and dress code are what you expect in a professional environment. For tardiness, absence, and hours you're supposed to work, the rules are pretty generalized. Employees have a framework of time that is expected of them to be at work which was previously agreed on with their bosses. Every employee varies, however. Most employees work from 8 am to 5 pm, but some may work from 7 am to 4 pm or 9 am to 6 pm. Employees are expected to consistently work their set hours but, if needed, can notify their team when they have to work different hours. Any missed time should be made up and employees are expected to act professional and team others with courtesy and respect. The dress code is fairly standard for a business like Realty Income. It's basically business casual; for Realty Income, this means no jeans (except for Friday), no graphic t-shirts, and professional wear (suits, blouses, dresses, dress pants, etc). At first, I completely forgot there would be a dress code, so I had to do last minute shopping for formal dress pants because my entire wardrobe consists of jeans, sweatpants, and sweatshirts. Fortunately, I found enough clothes that I'll be able to wear throughout internship. After learning about everything the company expected of their employees and what the company does, my uncle had to step away to attend a meeting and left me at his cubicle to review the 2017 Annual Report. This has the historical background of the company, highlights of the year, and financial performance of the company. It's for the people buying Realty Income to know what they're buying and if it's worth it in the end. For a few hours I sat at the cubicle and took detailed notes on the Annual report. I was told that this was going to be something I would do if there wasn't anything else assigned to me, so I didn't want to rush into it. When my uncle got out of the meeting, he sat down with me to go over the worksheet that students needed to fill out. At this point it was already past 4 hours, so we went out to go get lunch and talk about internship some more, just to double check that the times we discussed worked. Overall I had a good time working at Realty Income and I think I'm going to be a lot more interested than I originally thought. It has a lot of stuff that I actually don't mind spending time on; this includes note taking and analyzing data. These two things are done quite a lot at High Tech. I feel like biology, English and math all prepared me well for this internship. I took very detailed notes in biology and English, and spent a lot of time analyzing things such as data or documents in general. Math class also helped me prepare for this internship because I'm going to be needing to do quick math and calculations to help write a month-end report and analyse data from previous reports. I'm very excited to start internship at Realty Income and I think I'm going to do very well there. Even if it's not what I originally wanted to do, I can always get the experience of running a business and owning property. |