Leading up to the start of my assurance internship with Cohen & Company, I had many doubts about my ability to exercise proper time management. Not only am I a full-time student in the Master of Accounting program at Penn State, but I also hold an executive position for the Accounting Society club.
Throughout this blog, I will outline the tactics and Cohen & Company perks that helped me juggle these two school-related responsibilities, in addition to an internship.
Having only one class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday provided an amazing structure to my week. I would solely focus on completing school and club work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which left the other three days to work on projects for Cohen & Company. This distribution helped put me in one mindset throughout the entire day.
Freeing up a large portion of my Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays enabled me to increase my productivity and mitigate the stress of not having enough time to complete weekly assignments. This is the best strategy that I have found to properly manage my time. Not only did I complete all my work by 8-9 p.m., but I also had the entire weekend free to fulfil my fourth responsibility (my girlfriend).
This balance, however, was upended a few weeks during the semester when there were too many school and club tasks to complete on just Tuesday and Thursday. The first week I got overloaded, I was worried that I would have to choose between working on audits or doing well in school. Thankfully, Cohen & Company was extremely flexible, and my team members were understanding, even telling me to prioritize college.
This level of respect was not only comforting but also encouraged me to produce a higher quality of work with greater efficiency the following week. The firm’s compassionate culture was a major factor in my time management success.
At the start of the internship and semester, the workload was completely different, again posing a challenge to time management. As opposed to having too much to do, I had almost no schoolwork and only a couple of clients to work on.
Nevertheless, Cohen & Company’s flexibility again helped me mitigate this stress by offering a plethora of other jobs. For instance, in the second week of the internship, I encountered the situation described above. After reaching out to my team manager, she quickly found a crypto pricing app development project I could help with. Even though it was mainly populating a spreadsheet, I got the chance to learn about the backend of digital assets and how we find prices for the tokens clients trade. Additionally, it felt like I was aiding in the firm’s progression further into the digital asset market — an opportunity I might not have had at a bigger accounting firm.
All in all, by structuring my weeks, using the resources available at Cohen & Company and making the most of the firm’s friendly culture, I have been able to easily manage my time as an intern, club executive and full-time student.
Even with moments of overwhelming and underwhelming amounts of work, time management has been the driving factor in alleviating my anxiety. Hence, why I truly believe time management is stress management.
Cole Moore, Penn State University
Cohen & Company is not rendering legal, accounting or other professional advice. Information contained in this post is considered accurate as of the date of publishing. Any action taken based on information in this blog should be taken only after a detailed review of the specific facts, circumstances and current law.