By Anamil Kochar
Let me start by telling you something about myself. I am Anamil Kochar, from India and did my most of my schooling in Amity International School at New Delhi, the capital of India. After that I moved to Pune, which is a city in western India and enrolled in an International School, which followed the British Education System. This total change in school environment and coursework, along with the fact that we moved to culturally a different part of the country, has really shaped me as an individual and has been instrumental in leading me to study on the BA Accounting and Financial Management programme at the University of Sheffield.
Sheffield University is one of the best universities in the world for my course as the Management School is a Triple Crown Accredited Business School. This course allows us to not only learn accounting but also understand life in the work place and improve life in general through modules like Professional Self-Management.
Professional Self Management was probably my favourite module in first year. This module had an assignment every two weeks ranging from online self-analysis and group tasks to understanding plagiarism and creating a personal development plan. The self-analysis helped me know my personality and understand my strengths and weaknesses. The other tasks helped me reflect on my learning, performance and aspirations. The personal development plan allowed me to spell out what I wanted to achieve in life and the means to achieve it. Moreover, it also allowed me to plan for my personal, educational and career development. The best thing about this module was the guest lectures from IBM and Grant Thornton. They helped us understand what employers look for when recruiting students for placement, internships and graduate jobs. For example, all the employers want students to be a part of a committee at university level, following this I applied for, worked towards and got elected into the universities Raising and Giving committee as the treasurer. Furthermore, it also helped me understand the recruitment process in detail. This module focused on the development of personal values such as honesty, integrity, self-motivation and loyalty, which are useful for life in general.
Another interesting module in the first year was Business Challenges, where our aim was to run a simulated company over a period of two years making decisions about the pricing of products, amount to be spent on advertising, marketing and production. We then had to determine profit and customer satisfaction at the end of two years. This module looked at all the aspects of running a business and is very useful if someone want to run their own business in the future. Also, it had a trading period every 10 days, and within the last week of the semester, we had a presentation and an essay due, so we had to work with very tight deadlines. One thing that I learnt from this module is that anything can happen in business world, be it a challenge, a deadline or a strategic decision, you have to be ready to expect the unexpected.
The other main modules such as Introduction to Management Accounting, Financial Accounting, and Business Economics helped me understand the details and techniques of Accounting, the importance of accounting in real life and practical approaches to the subject. This structured and supportive approach in all the modules also helped me achieve an internship in a financial company at the end of first year; you can read more about this in another blog post coming soon!
To conclude, I would like to say that I am really proud that I came to study at the University of Sheffield and I am enjoying every bit of my student life as well as every aspect of my course.