Emily from perspective 

I began working at TGG Accounting,’s parent, in January of 2018, and graduated San Diego State University in May 2019 with a bachelor’s in accounting. I have learned so much during this time. Most, if not all, of the accounting tasks I worked on, were not learned in school.

My time at university taught me a lot and most of that knowledge is required to fully understand the tasks I was assigned. However, there was a huge gap between what I was taught at work and what I was learning in school. For example, when I became employed at TGG, I had no idea what a bank reconciliation was, and it turned out to be a critical task that is very common in accounting. In my Junior year of college, one of my classes finally introduced bank reconciliations, but it was done on paper and only a single assignment for the entire year. I learned very little from this assignment and it did not align with how it was performed in QuickBooks. You could argue every accounting system is different, but no one uses paper to reconcile a bank anymore.

If someone asked me what the most helpful class was in college for my current position at TGG, I would say it was my business writing class. It was broken up into grammar, written assignments, and presentations. While I did not advance much from the written portion, my presentation skills increased which ended up helping with my confidence in other areas as well.

How can you bridge the gap between the classroom and your career? If you are still in school:

1. Apply for an internship: It is never too early. After my first accounting course in community college, my professor offered me an internship with his private tax business for the season. Don’t wait for an offer though, it likely will not happen. Be proactive and find one! Want to try tax? Then find a tax business that needs help during tax season. Search for small accounting businesses that could use the help. Smaller businesses could potentially give you more experience as many employees tend to wear different hats.
2. When you are finished with that one, find another one in a different field of accounting or at least with a different industry. This will expose you to many different fields and styles of accounting. While standards for accounting must stay the same, companies usually have slightly different ways of doing things.
3. The next option would be for you to take a certificate course at TGG U. Our courses are designed to teach and give you the knowledge that you will be using when you start working. In general, continuing your education is always a great idea!

If you recently graduated and are thinking it is too late, it isn’t. It may be overwhelming if you haven’t started yet, but just remember you have to start somewhere.