Personal Reflection on Internship Experience and Leadership Skills

This report presents a personal reflection on an internship experience, focusing on the application of theoretical knowledge in a practical setting. The author, who worked as a junior accountant, recounts their responsibilities, including preparing accounts, performing bank reconciliations, and assisting with financial statements. The core of the reflection centers around an instance where the author successfully resolved a bank reconciliation issue, demonstrating their leadership abilities and problem-solving skills. This experience underscored the importance of leadership for professional growth and success in the corporate world. The author references academic sources that support the development of leadership skills and the importance of practical experience for learning and career advancement. The reflection emphasizes the value of applying learned concepts in real-world scenarios and the development of crucial leadership qualities.

Running head: REFLECTION
REFLECTION
Job experience may be considered to be one of the most beautiful ways of learning as the
process of such experience may enable an individual to apply what he or she had learned during
the course of his or her graduate studies in a practical and real-world scenario (Pruzan, Pruzan-
Mikkelsen, Miller & Miller, 2017). The paper is a kind of self reflection of the researcher in
which he has described the experience he had acquired during his internship.
I was working as an intern with American Medical Response where my role was of a
junior accountant. My job responsibilities included preparation of daily books of accounts,
performing bank reconciliation, preparing cash reconciliation and also to help my senior
accountant periodically. In addition, I was supposed to help the senior accountant to complete
and finalize the financial statements on a yearly basis. The work gave me immense knowledge in
terms of a practical idea as to how the books of accounts are actually prepared in the real world. I
would like to share one of my experiences which I found to be extremely value-adding for me.
When I was doing my job then suddenly one day my senior boss asked me to look into
the bank book which was not getting tallied with the bank statement. He indicated that this must
be the reason for bank reconciliation is done in an imperfect manner and that's why he asked me
to prepare a revised bank reconciliation statement with 100% accuracy. In order to perform the
instructed task, I got two business day’s time from my boss. In our accounts department, there
was another employee who was junior to me in terms of the organizational hierarchy. In other
words, he was a support staff who used to provide voucher preparation services for the entire
organization. When being instructed by my boss, I had a brief meeting with him stating what I
need. I instructed him how to get the work done by collecting all the bank statements and

Running head: REFLECTION
vouchers for the bank book of last month. He performed the work as per my instruction and by
the end of the day, I was able to gather all the necessary documents and data necessary for the
preparation of a revised bank reconciliation statement.
Surprisingly, with those data and documents, I prepared a revised bank reconciliation
statement with 100% accuracy and submitted to my boss by next day morning. It was needless to
mention that my boss was happy to see that I had been able to deliver what was instructed me to
do and that too within a given and short timeline. Such an incident made me realize that I have
leadership ability within me which I definitely need to cultivate in order to be successful in the
corporate world in the long run.
I will finally conclude that leadership is one of the most crucial aspects of an individual
for his or her professional growth and everyone needs to cultivate the same within one self to
become successful in the corporate world for the long-run sustainability (Lakatos, 2017).

Running head: REFLECTION
References:
Lakatos, Z. (2017). Corporate social performance in emerging markets: Sustainable leadership
in an interdependent world. Routledge.
Pruzan, P., Pruzan-Mikkelsen, K., Miller, D., & Miller, W. (2017). Leading with wisdom:
Spiritual-based leadership in business. Routledge.