This past week in Italy has been the best thus far. First, in Prof. Gupta’s class, our class discussions have been getting more informative, thoughtful, and argumentative. In the first few weeks, Prof. Gupta would be the main lecturer and would be teaching us about corporate social responsibility and governance. Now, everyone in class has become more involved and would share examples that they would be reading from the Wall Street Journal. There have been many instances in class where students with differing opinions on a certain issue would debate back and forth with each other leading to a whole class discussion. In my opinion, the Wall Street Journals have been helping my classmates and myself better understand the content shared in class. It’s one thing to listen to Prof. Gupta lectures, read the articles he posts in class, and watch the videos, but to apply what we would have been learning about to real-world stories is what elevates the learning to the next level. Exploring and researching how different firms and CEOs operate and how it affects their stakeholders, shareholders, and impact on society is the most challenging part but also my favorite part about this class.    

For my internship, in the beginning of the week, I continued on what I worked on the previous week which was setting up their “INCASSI” and “POLIZZE” files for each month. Then, after I completed this task, I would put all of the content in one big file for the 2021 year and present it to the boss who would review it and send it out. Towards the middle of the week, I had to translate a Swedish company’s balance sheet and income statement which was all in Swedish to English and Italian for my supervisor and boss. This would all be put into a separate file in Excel and I would have to align the data to match our company’s format. At the end of the week, I recorded who our clients rented their properties to and the amount into our accounting system. For this task, I had to use a keypad on the computer and type the numbers in as fast as I could. In this activity, I learned how to work fast while being cautious and attentive. In accounting, you can’t make any errors because as the files get passed along, the mistakes will just keep building and end up being worse in the end. It’s essential to minimize errors and if so, to correct them immediately. Most importantly, I learned to pay attention to small details as it is so easy to mistype or misread numbers especially when you are trying to work quickly.

This weekend, my friends and I went to Cinque Terre and stayed on a boat overnight in Porto Venere. It was an unbelievable experience. The water was so clear and the beaches were beautiful and packed with locals and tourists. Two of my favorite things that I liked about it were the pastel colors on houses and buildings and the elevation they were at. To travel to each town, we took a ferry and when we pulled into the dock, we would look up and see multiple blocks of colors stacked together on top of each other. Some would be high above the sea so most of the time, we would hike to see the other buildings up close and to see the water from a high elevation. I would highly recommend visiting Cinque Terre if one were to ever visit Italy.

Porto Venere

Riomaggiore from the coast

Riomaggiore

Spiaggia di Monterosso

Seafood Pizza