Hiep N. Nguyen

PDP: 450 – Senior Portfolio

1/20/2019

Introduction

When I first got here, this course was still called PDP. It has now changed to FILA which is much more fitting to what I had experienced here. Just as the school itself has changed in many ways yet has kept intact its foundations in the pursuit of higher education and development of individuals, my education experience here had often been different from my expectations while staying true to my end goals. I came in as a Freshman on August 2016 and declared my two majors in Economics and Business Administration with a minor in Philosophy and Religion. I was sure about my business and economics track and did not change my declared majors which allowed me to continuously work towards timely completion of my programs. It was at the end of my Sophomore year that I decided to declare an emphasis in Finance with my majors, and I had chosen that path through my experience as a college student as well as what I saw doing external internships off campus during the summers. My classes had given me an introduction to what the field of economics and finance demanded, and I learned that it took personal dedication and discipline to further advance in my career that will be built on the foundation I received from my time in college. I am not the same person I was 4 years ago, and who I am today I believe has a lot to do with what I had gone through with my time here at Bridgewater College.

Integration, Experiential Learning, & Personalized Education

As a Financial Economics and Business major, I had taken my core business classes where I learned the fundamentals of accounting and financial analysis. This leads into my first artifact which is the “BH20 Corporation Working Trial Balance.” This assignment among many others in my accounting courses had laid a basis for some universally applied and adopted skills used by accountants. In the artifact, the main parts of a financial statement such as the company income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flow, and statement of shareholders equity are presented. In another tab named “journal” various transactions are listed by date with their debit and credit accounts stated accordingly. This project is a representation of some core accounting skills used throughout the profession. I had learned to journalize transactions by date based on what they were for as part of the bookkeeping procedure along with future adjustments to past entries. This allowed for later analysis of transactions within the month to report a comprehensive financial statement.

During my time at Bridgewater, I had done an internship every summer I could to build my resume and establish my professional portfolio before I graduated. In our current society, having a bachelor’s degree does not secure as much as it once had promised to. Therefore, knowing this I had to dedicate a good chunk of my efforts to building my credentials outside of the classroom. It was in my internships that I saw the BH20 artifact project being put to practical use. All my internships were with firms or institutions that dealt with financial statements regardless of them being for or non-profit. The artifact itself was from my intermediate accounting course which I had taken immediately prior to accepting an Accounting internship with FR Drake, a Middleby Corporation subsidiary. What I had learned from my accounting courses were put to practice most intensively during this time.

I started with FR Drake in May and finished the end of August as soon as classes began for the fall semester. FR Drake is a subsidiary of Middleby Corporation, the publicly traded parent corporate head of 72 other companies all related to food processing, packaging, and appliances. Drake itself has over 20 patents and has recently installed and built custom machines for big names like Wendy’s, Tyson’s, and ToFurkey. I worked for their accounting department under their Controller and staff accountant while splitting my time with marketing and occasionally the HR office. For the four months with Accounting, I audited and journalized expense vouchers and acquainted myself with using Quantum, their accounting software. I reconciled Amex bank statements the end of every month and keyed in Payroll journal entries every two weeks. I also filed and helped organize documents to be purged within the next 7 years, flagging what needs to be approved after Amex vouchers have been created. My Excel proficiency had also notably improved during that internship. With their Marketing department, I organized data and tracked expenses from tradeshows most prominently of one in Germany called IFFA. I also followed up on leads with future expos and inquired about costs, aligning with budget for marketing expense allocations. Their website also needed to update new brand logos and content, all of which are highlighted for editing by me and their technical writer who is the link between marketing and engineering. After I compiled the information on expos Middleby is attending in the future, I researched and followed up with hotels and brand marketing materials like booth space, magazine ads, etc. Accounting had me track marketing expenses by scanning invoices and compiling them onto Excel worksheets for the department to reconcile. I used other worksheets to track various other expenses like employee travel liabilities that must be reimbursed and ghost card expenses that accounted for airfare paid by Middleby Corporation. I had completed all goals set up for me during my time there, assisting and various accounting and marketing projects, and this gave me not only insight into the corporate for-profit world but I was also able to utilize knowledge from my Finance and accounting courses to carry out my day to day duties. It was a tremendously valuable and relevant experience to my major, and through this I hope to be able to further my career in the field of accounting and finance administration. Full details of this is on my second text artifact title “Final Paper Bus 480 2019.”

My accounting courses along with my internship experiential learning had solidified my background during my time as a Bridgewater student and had bolstered my profile as a rising professional. By learning about financial statements and general ledgers in my classes, I was able to further apply them into the real world which helped me grasp the historical and well as data driven side of accounting and finance.

Engage Diverse Perspectives

Prior to Bridgewater, I had my family as mentors to direct me in my career choice. One statement that stuck out to me was that any accountant or financial analyst can dissect and report data but not all are able to communicate about them critically and manageably. In other words, all accountants can do accounting, but not all can write. Therefore, I chose Philosophy as a minor; it was a way of selling myself and stand out in that I can bookkeep and do a bit of technical and business writing. However, I had engaged in more than I thought I would during my time at Bridgewater as a Philosophy minor.

In my philosophy classes, I was introduced and made to be more critical of different issues and diverse perspectives. One such examples if in my artifact named “Abortion reflection” that, as the title suggests, made me contemplate my stance on the issue. Not only did I learn pragmatic and professional skills, but I was also made to analyze and examine my own preconceptions on a deeper level. In this artifact, the topic of abortion is and has been controversial yet is explored in my classes that dealt with contemporary philosophical issues. I had noted my stance on the issue and reflected on how it had fused with the different perspectives of my peers in the class. Reflecting on my stance of such a controversial issue provoked me to also actively listen to my peers and be able to cohesively think about the matter instead of avoiding politics or controversy as I usually do. Although politics is not something I will dwell into, integrating such thoughts and reflections were important to me to practice writing down my own thoughts as peripheral to my intended career as it may be.

Public Discourse: Citizenship & Community Responsibility

When looking at controversy, some topics are more related to my major and career field than others. Thinking about my stance on abortion and having a census of opinion from my classmates was interactively fun; however, my major also prompts issues that are just as two-sided. In my economics major, I had taken Econ 420: “Development of economic thought” which deals with different schools of economic thought. One issue that is notable and up for debate across different perspectives is the issue of income inequality and financial distribution. My next artifact titled “E420 Income Paper” deals with the public discourse of resource allocation and economic prosperity. Through all the eras of economic thought, it is apparent that what is seen as fair in terms of value of work is disputed and capitalists would have a different perspective of income distribution from socialists. Nonetheless, my thesis is that people need the subsistence minimum to be able to live and support the economy whether said economy is free-market, Keynesian or socialist. It is ideal that income is distributed on a fair basis, but the system today has its outliers of extreme affluence and severe poverty. Therefore, I believe there will in the future be further economic reform and proposition for solutions in economic thought. My thesis deals with the ethical issue of care ethics from my philosophy classes integrated with rational and economic proposition. Economics often has moral and ethical implications as a motivating factor to push towards progress, and it was during my time immersed in such classes that I saw how every professional field has its own set of ethical codes. Just as doctors must take a hypocritic oath, accountants must comply to codes of ethics and conduct, and economists make economic proportions based on net gain in societal well-being. With this specific artifact, economics had given me a new viewpoint on how care ethics had driven markets and systems historically and the question of equality, integrity, and fairness had so much correspondence to my career path. As a student in both economics and philosophy, I was made to think about how proposals and economic theory would influence or avoid harm to everyone; this taught me that I need to contemplate decisions more carefully in the future when I am a professional having a duty to serve the clientele or community that I am responsible for.

My paper on income inequality was an attribute to how I had developed economic thought in connection to philosophical and societal deontology. But more immediate is how I am as a citizen of an academic community and more importantly a consumer. My other artifact in public discourse is my Oral Comm informative speech about the underground economy. This is relevant on a smaller scale than income distribution because all of us are participants in the economy as consumers. By knowing how individual finance is directed, we can decide what to do with our money and make sure that it goes to ethical sources. In the speech, I highlighted that the underground economy is not necessarily a bad thing and is something that can drive cash flow in a fast, convenient, and positive way. However, it was through this project that I had explored the negative externalities of it such as money laundering, trafficking, and slavery. Part of the underground economy is money laundering which cleans illegal money by setting up faux businesses and puppet banks that, through money exchanging hand off records, converts immorally acquired currency into spendable money. Because of this, my artifact highlights the importance of individuals and citizens in a community to exercise prudent spending on products or businesses that are legitimate and moral. What one chooses to do next with his or her money counts because every dollar spent is a vote in cash for the world that will continue to exist. To stop the piracy and copyright that is going on in China or the cocoa plantations that use child labor in Ghana’s harvesting fields, one should keep in mind to research and know where certain products come from and use his or her dollar votes to boycott immoral businesses.

Global Citizenship & Intercultural Competencies

Just as my paper on income inequality and speech about the underground economy had dealt with how finance and economics affects the ethical issue of societal and household well-being, economics had also opened my eyes to how certain issues are more nuanced than either a good or bad, and often these problems are illustrated more comprehensively from a broader global perspective.

My sixth artifact was written for my “Econ 305: Contemporary Economic Issues” class and is titled “Economics of Endangered Species.” This was a topic that I was passionate about as I had traveled to South Africa in my early formative years to shadow my father as diplomats studying the country’s policies on trophy hunting. In the paper, I discuss the reasons why trophy hunting is not why animals are at risk of going extinct. The real threat to wildlife protection is poaching and exploitation of animals to fuel the ivory trade. Contrary to Western left-wing notions of animosity towards trophy hunting, such practices economically sustain conservation efforts by providing financial incentive to local agencies and governments to protect endangered animal habitats, fending off illegal poaching and regulating the ivory trade. The ivory trade is something that affects an entire biosphere in countries outside the US specifically in Africa where the most fauna with ivory is being poached from.

In this artifact, I was able to not only express my stance on the issue but also be able to back it up with concrete evidence of the benefits of trophy hunting: legal trophy hunting provides revenue which is used to fund conservation efforts. I was able to present figures that supported the economic benefit trophy hunting brought to the communities and the animals that inhabit the regions. Trophy hunts are tightly regulated, limiting how many animals of a species can be hunted a year based on its level of endangerment which ensures their number thrive and continues the species’ existence and population growth. Through this paper, I was also able to examine other proposed alternatives. The most common solution proposed is a complete international ban on the ivory trade. However, this would only stimulate the formation of a black market as demand remained steady while supply decreases which drives up prices of ivory. In this case, hunting is either regulated and stimulating to conservation efforts or handed over to the black market created because of a ban on ivory or any animal product which fuels poaching and overhunting species to extinction. Researching for this artifact, I was also introduced to new proposals such as staining of tusks and ivory which is a more humanitarian pathos that approaches morality rather than dealing with economics. The goal is to protect animals that have stained tusks and horns from being poached. Researching for papers such as these had brought me up to date with news and developments in such fields. However, in this case staining and colorization technology has not become advanced enough to make it a viable option as coating will be scrapped off and continue to be poached. Economically, trophy hunting is by far the most sustainable solution to appease the inelastic demand in the ivory trade. Most African countries use trophy hunting as the main method to fund wildlife conservancies as local economies are incompetent in dealing with such matters. If that were taken away, most endangered species are sure to go extinct. Legal trophy hunting introduces free-market regulations to ivory trade, controlling instead of criminalizing it. Sanctioned trophy hunting can counter poaching, which is highly destructive, organized, ruthless, and decimating animal populations. Trophy hunting offers a real-world solution to an ethically dubious problem. It also could solve the problem of loss of habitat, another key driver of species extinction, as farmers clearing animal habitat for farmland now receive revenue from trophy hunters which incentivizes them to sustain endangered populations while protecting their land from poachers. With how strict each trophy hunt is monitored and how much revenue the business model generates, killing one of an endangered species creates a lucrative, open economy that saves potentially millions more.

This artifact also highlights the difference between perceptions here in the first world vs the reality of countries abroad, affecting a poorer third world country in a way that countries like the US would be unethical in claiming a moral high ground; it is easy for the first world to judge such situations when economies and societies are vastly different. This essay is one such piece that demonstrated my link of economics and finance to philosophy. It also highlighted it from an international perspective that I was able to bring into the classroom during my time at Bridgewater.

Ethical Reasoning

Public discourse and overcoming my fear of taking a potentially controversial stance on topics such as abortion and trophy hunting had built up my intellectual sovereignty. On a more personal note, my education had also taught me to be more proactive with ethical reasoning on an everyday level. Ethical and virtual issues being resolved often first come from individuals acting based on principle and virtue. This is illustrated in my artifact from my Phil 367: “Conflict Transformation” course that deals with resolution of trauma, grievance, and public discourse as the title suggests. It was in this artifact titled “Phil 367 Final Reflection Paper” that I had applied what I learned in my business courses about public relation and exploration of intent to be able to manage a successful business based on healthy work environment. In this artifact, I explored the 4 pillars of Conflict transformation which are Trauma, Restorative Justice, Peacebuilding, and Nonviolence. Through the four books that were assigned in the class, I have realized not only how conflict manifests but how best to deal with and resolve it from daily life scenarios to workplace mediation. Engaged, responsible citizens of any community can provide publicly accessible reasons for their intentions and actions and to understand the logical and ethical consequences of those actions. Similarly, this artifact is a snippet into how I had learned to manage conflict through rationalization of reasons for strife to be able to dissect their consequences and bring parties to conciliation and resolution. In both personal and work life, restorative justice is a progressive form of mediation where all parties involved partake in resolution and come to a consensus that does not leave future doubt or potential escalation. Working in finance and economics, monetary analysis deals heavily with solutions and transformation that ethics offers a solid guideline for.

Conclusion

Through my various courses in Economics, Finance, and Philosophy I was not only introduced to new ideas but was made to reflect on some of my own past knowledge and cognition as well. My time at Bridgewater had not only allowed me to expand on my knowledge as a budding professional but also merged my majors and minors together into something I did not know would flow so well together four years ago. In the beginning, I had envisioned my philosophy minor to be a subtext in my resume that I used to sell as confirmation of my writing capability. However, as seen in the connection of my artifacts as snippets of my education I had come to realize that my minor is a compliment to the practical side of my majors. I not only had grown in technical skills from accounting and finance but had also developed more critical thinking and analytical skills that pair with the pragmatic side as an economist. I was able to not only share ideas but also integrate others into my own through research and reflection of course material. I remember from my first class as a freshman I was told that the reason I was in college would be to not only receive a degree at the end but also come out being “educated.” At the time I did not know what that meant but as a reflect on all my past writings I have come to realize that the piece of paper is a representation of personal development, a testament to how much I had grown over the past four years. As I venture into the professional world I carry with me confidence and pride that my time at Bridgewater had not only equipped me with the foundations of technical skills but also drove me to step out of my comfort zone and dwell into the unknown and discover that the world and its many perspectives are extremely vast.

Plato once said that “he who knows everything knows nothing.” I used to revel in the fact that, out of my philosophia or love for wisdom, I know to keep an open mind and branch out into the unknown. It is through my time at Bridgewater that I saw how much is out there that I don’t know and that I may not be able to comprehend. This was scary to me at first and I had expected to overcome this fear by searching for certainty. However, through my time at Bridgewater learning more about how the world works and having a basis to refer to I now see this search as exciting; it is not certainty that I want but continual growth in an everchanging world. At times it is fine to challenge a consensus with controversy but there is a time and place for everything. Knowing that, I am comfortable enough to be able to rationalize and engage with the world while continuing to develop as an individual. I am not the same person I was four years ago, and I will not be the same in the next four.