From China to North Dakota to New York: an Internship Odyssey

摘要

What do you get when you combine four students from China, the University of North Dakota, and the New York headquarters of Ernst & Young? You get a fascinating internship experience! This paper describes the journey the students took, first from the University of Shanghai Science and Technology (USST) to the University of North Dakota, and then on to do an internship with Ernst & Young, a prestigious Big Four accounting firm at their headquarters in New York City. Internships have long been touted as a win-win for both students and employers, but what additional challenges and rewards arise when the internships involve international students? How did the opportunity come about for the internships? What work experiences did they gain, and what cultural differences and other experiences did they encounter during their time in New York? What did the students find most rewarding from their experiences? What would they have done differently? And what did the employer gain from the internships? What lessons did the employer learn in the process?This paper addresses these questions and describes the interns' experiences along with reflections by the interns and the employer on what worked well and what could have been done differently.