Hello! My name is Mikaela Smigo and I am a Finance and Accounting major going into my junior year. As I’m writing this, I have about a week under my belt in Sydney and am looking forward to starting my classes and internship.
Studying at Pitt Business has helped me both discover and work towards my goals, and the global opportunities have been some of the best experiences I’ve been a part of during my time here. Professionally, I am curious about different areas of business and finance, which is why I’m working towards partaking in a financial rotational program post-grad. After working corporate for a few years, I plan to attend law school and practice corporate law. This trajectory is my way of gaining experience to be a business journalist, where I hope to write for posts like the WSJ or the NYT.
As previously stated, global experiences have been a crucial aspect of my educational and professional growth, but traveling is also my favorite way to learn in general. I find that nothing pushes me to grow more than seeing a different way of life and gaining cultural perspective. While I am currently studying in Sydney, I have had multiple other international experiences, like my time in Vietnam for the Plus3 program last May. Besides that, I’ve also traveled to the Philippines to visit family numerous times, as well as other countries like Japan, Denmark, Portugal, to name a few.
I’ve traveled to many places, but Sydney is already becoming one of my favorites. This program, Summer GBI Sydney, is easy to love, with six weeks of immersion in Sydney, including a class and an internship. The class I’m taking during these six weeks is International Finance, a subject I am looking forward to learn about. What I am more excited about, however, is my internship with AusBiz, an Australian business newspaper. In my position, I will be learning from their publisher, Michelle Hespe, on how to find subjects for stories, conduct interviews, and eventually write pieces.
From this experience, there’s surely countless things I’ll learn. What I am hoping to gain is an understanding of what life is like as a writer, to see if it’s something I am interested in working towards. Beyond this, I am setting some goals so that I can check-in and see my progress:
- Grow My Writing: I have loved writing and am fairly consistent with it on my own time, but since I am majoring in Finance and Accounting, I don’t get much time to work on it professionally. Having the structure and feedback will be beneficial to learn more about my own writing, as well as getting experience writing in a professional context.
- Maintain at Least Three Connections: Traveling is the ultimate opportunity to meet new people, thus it’s a great time to expand my network. Whether I stay in touch with people in my program or any other professionals I encounter, I am hoping to start relationships with people I can keep in contact with as I finish the program.
- Work-Life Balance: One thing I want to have in my future is work-life balance, and being in a packed and fast-paced program, I feel that this is the perfect opportunity to learn habits that allow me to find this balance. I know that parts of my career will be demanding in the future, so being in a Sydney with a culture that prioritizes this type of balance is a great way to learn how to achieve it.
Tomorrow I begin my first day at my internship, which should be exciting! I am looking forward to checking back in to this blog to see what I learn and do.
P.S… if you’re nosy, this is what I look like:
