Honors Theses

Date of Award

Spring 5-9-2020

Document Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Department

Accountancy

First Advisor

Victoria Dickinson

Relational Format

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The completion of my Thesis came as a result of enrolling in ACCY 420, a course taught by Dr. Victoria Dickinson, designed to provide accounting students with the opportunity to craft the thesis over the course of their junior year in college. This way, students are able to gradually write theses by completing several case studies designed to present students with challenging situations in which real-world accounting issues are explored. With the intensified recruiting process and the internship in the winter of senior year, this class was an excellent method to write the thesis during my junior year of college, before I was extremely busy with my internship and other recruiting obligations.

The cases presented over the course of two semesters ranged from an analysis of potential cities in which I would consider starting a career, to an analysis of Starbuck’s financial statements. These cases each provided a unique view at various issues in the accounting world that allowed me as a student to gain a glimpse of issues that I will eventually face as I continue my career in public accounting. The case studies also provided an opportunity to problem-solve and create unique solutions to a problem. As many of the cases were open-ended and could be interpreted in many ways, the space for unique analysis as a student was interesting and beneficial to my learning in this course.

Over the course of my time in this class, I attained several skills that will ultimately be very useful as I continue forward on my career path in public accounting. First, I improved vastly on my ability to work independently in creating analysis for problems in which the answer was unclear or open-ended. In addition, I was able to gain skills in using Excel, a system that is

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absolutely vital to work in public accounting, and a tool that I used daily during my internship. Overall, the experience of completing my thesis through the ACCY 420 was an extremely worthwhile endeavor that I found very enriching to my experience at the University of Mississippi. The teamwork involved in the class was great as well, in addition to the connection of the class over the course of the academic year. The accounting thesis program was very beneficial overall to my growth as a student and provided me with skills that I will carry forward into my career.

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