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If there are two words to best describe Kristin Johnston’s life, they would be “time” and “management.” You might want to throw “juggling” in there too…just for good measure.
Not content to come to Temple University Ambler to finish off her degree in Accounting, the 21-year-old Doylestown native has taken on the mantle of president for Beta Alpha Psi, the national accounting honor society. She also engages in a great deal of volunteer work with young people. Oh, and she has a wedding to plan with her fiancé Mike Diletto.
“Right now the ultimate goal is to get a job. It’s important to me to find something that I like and not get too stressed out about it,” she said. “I have a tendency to take on too many things. I’m getting married in June and I have everything to do beforehand. There were two things that I left to (Mike), suits and transportation. Of course neither got done.”
And this is the scaled down version of Kristin’s life. In addition all of the volunteer work with Our Lady of Mt Carmel in Doylestown and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, she was coaching field hockey at Lenape Middle School, working at a shoe store, and attempting to piece together a “semi-social life.”
“I didn’t even want a large social life…just a little one. I had taken on one too many things,” she said. “My best advice to any student is to get a planner; it helps a lot. Without it, I’d never know when a test was coming up or when school work was due.”
While it’s in her nature to be busy, Kristin is striking a balance between in-class responsibilities and out-of-class interests. First, however, she had to find the right fit for her future.
“When I started out, I was an education major. I was going into teaching and spent a semester at Kutztown University but it just didn’t fit me,” she said. “I had an amazing accounting teacher at (Central Bucks West High School) who really made you want to learn more about it.”
Kristin started on her path toward an accounting degree by enrolling in a “core-to-core” program at Bucks County Community College where the credits earned there would transfer easily to Temple. She calls her current crop of courses “the gauntlet.”
While there’s a little bit of everything peppered into the mix of classes, most focus squarely on her major.
“In Cost Accounting we are reading a book about how the country was in the Gilded Age (the period between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s) and how we are now. It looks at the gap between rich and poor, which I don’t think many of us think about too often,” she said. “In Business Law for Accountants we’ve been talking mostly about the different legal aspects of torts and in Advanced Accounting, we’ve been studying purchase methods and positive branding, basically how to create good will toward a product.”
Writing for Business and Industry, Kristin said, is an elective course she decided to undertake where “we’ve already completed an autobiographical abstract and will be working on a research paper on a business topic of our choice.”
Kristin also has a volleyball class this semester in the Red Barn Gym. The game, however, has followed her outside of the classroom.
“One of the biggest events that Beta Alpha Psi holds every year is a charity volleyball tournament with members of the major accounting firms in the area. It’s a great way to support a good cause — the United Way — but it is also an excellent way to network,” she said. “It’s only natural that if you go and talk to someone in a suit, you are going to be more intimidated. Here you have partners from major firms in shorts and t-shirts. It’s a much more relaxed atmosphere and I think it makes you less afraid of saying something stupid.”
With light appearing a little ways down the tunnel — graduation is counted in months, not years now — Kristin is also heavily engaged in interviewing with prospective employers.
“I want to work in a public firm,” she said. “One of the great things here is that as a business major, I have access to FoxNet, which has a huge job and internship database.”
FoxNet is an online job database program offered through the Fox School of Business and Management’s Center for Student Professional Development. All Fox students have a profile on FoxNet and can access its resources at any time. Students also take part in resumé development workshops and individual or small group resumé critiques. Once that is completed, they upload their resumé onto FoxNet, which can be accessed by more than 50 employers.
“There are a lot of interviews that take place right on the Main campus,” Kristin said. “I was also able to set up an externship program on my own with (accounting firm) Grant Thornton this past summer in New York.”
In keeping with the juggling act that is her life, Kristin also chaperoned a group of 31 teens, members of a youth group at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, to Italy with fellow Temple University Ambler student Mark Farzetta, a communications major who happens to run the student radio station, WRFT 1610-AM, on campus.
“Mark decided we’d take a hike from the hotel to the Vatican. It took something like three hours — 15 kids walking around in circles having no idea what we were doing,” she said. “It was an amazing trip, all in all a terrific experience.”
And that wasn’t the only trip Kristin took over the summer.
“A week before school started, my fiancé decided he wanted to go to Canada to see Niagara Falls,” she said. “That was the week I wanted to get the registering done for the wedding! Why couldn’t he have waited until next summer after school is over?!”
This is the first part of an “A Year in the Life” series featuring Kristin Johnston. Kristin, of Doylestown, was completing her Accounting degree at Amber at the time of the series.
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