My Motivation To Build A Career In Accounting And Finance

From a young age I have always been intrigued with any subject involving numbers (one of them being accounting). My Dad helped this passion of mine flourish as we would always play critical thinking games such as Countdown and Sudoku in our free time; this constant exposure to numbers helped me develop my passion for maths and accounting as a young boy.

To proliferate my knowledge in this field I would always keep up with the news as well as this I would read magazines and books surrounding ‘Accounting and Finance’. I read ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ by Robert T Kiyosaki several times and this basically gave the idea that money comes and goes, but if you know how money works then you can gain power over it and can start building wealth and keep up with the ‘Deloitte’ magazine. Doing this background reading made my passion grow but also reading these magazines helped me understand the current economic and financial struggles the economy face. Whilst doing some background research I stumbled across a very compelling article ‘Carolina’ In addition to this I have attended several Accounting and Finance lectures. One of these which was a visit to the Bank of England, it was during this visit when I learnt about the role of the Bank and also the operation of monetary policy. Understanding these policies such as fiscal and monetary policy is key in understanding how the economy works and helped me understand the choices made by the government. I believe that this goes hand-in-hand with Accounting as both these are considered as social sciences which cover some similar topics i.e. marginal costing and break-even. The 3 A levels I am studying are closely linked to the field of Accounting and Finance. Studying Accounting and Economics helped me with monetary problems and how to handle accounts. These two social sciences do have quite an overlap during the 2-year course. The basic concepts such as ‘markets’ and ‘shares’ have been mentioned in both subjects. I began to transfer my skills learnt from one subject to another and therefore helping me to apply my knowledge to areas which may not been clearly understood before.

I believe studying Maths at A level has really helped my problem solving skills and this also broadened my knowledge of numbers; manipulation of numbers is key in almost every job in the world today and studying a challenging subject like maths will put me a step closer to the amazing world of Accounting and Finance. Outside of my maths lessons I would take part in the ‘Maths masterclass’ which only a selected few would attend; not only did this assist my learning but it gave me various other skills. Working with other people to solve some very complicated problems, this not only helped me grasp ideas from other perspectives but also listen and learn to work in big groups which is essential when thrown in to the work environment.

Doing my work placement with Barclays really gave me an influential insight into the world of work. Working alongside the best in the country helped me develop my communication skills and customer interactions also aided this. I really enjoyed the experience as I….To keep my mind off the stressful college work I would take part in multiple extra-curricular activities. I done Shaolin- Kung fu for 7 years and this has really disciplined myself. I have entered several kickboxing competitions some of which I experienced upsetting losses, this pushed me to train harder and this really developed my character as it made me determined in everything that I do. In addition to this I have completed my grade 4 in piano by ABRSM. Learning music was quite difficult and I didn’t like it at first. However, through hard work and constant practice I learnt and started enjoying every piece I played, playing each piece perfectly I got a lot of self-satisfaction. In spite of such a busy schedule with work and extra-curricular activities with college work can be daunting, but this prepares me for university as time keeping is a very important skill needed to survive.

After my degree I would like to take further exemptions to become a fully qualified chartered accountant. I believe that getting a degree will help my knowledge and help me achieve my goal of one day being able to work for one of the Big Four.