Santa Ana College alumna Amanda Nguyen is ready for the future, but that hasn’t always been the case.
After taking time off after high school to deal with some personal problems, Amanda took a friend’s advice and enrolled at Santa Ana College (SAC). It was there that she met accounting professor and department chair Jinhee Trone, who introduced Amanda to accounting as a career.
“So often, students come into my classroom with the preconceived notion that accounting will be boring and that they won’t do well,” says Trone. “But then they are surprised to find that it really is an interesting and exciting subject.”
Amanda was especially excited about the way that accounting touches every aspect of a business. “[Professor Trone] told us that accounting is a vital part of every business,” she says. “That all businesses need it, and that without it, they can’t run.”
Amanda, who herself likes being “super-involved” in many different things, loved the idea of a job that was important at every level. “I just thought it was meant for me,” she recalls. “I ended up doing really well in the course, so I changed my major to accounting.”
Amanda, who is now a student at Cal State Fullerton and preparing to take the CPA exam, credits Santa Ana College with helping her figure out what she wanted to do with her future.
“I feel like, as I took classes at Santa Ana, it kind of gave me the fundamental building blocks to find out the student that I wanted to be,” says Amanda. “I learned that I learned best when I would interact with the professor and when I would take a lot of notes. And from that, it shaped me into the student that I am now.”
With her eyes set firmly on the future, Amanda would eventually like to be a partner in charge of an audit department at a Big Four accounting firm.
“Amanda is such a great example of a student who just needed the right encouragement and environment to find her interests and flourish,” says Trone. “Santa Ana College and other community colleges are exactly the college setting where a student can do this.
“I am so proud of Amanda’s accomplishments.”
Today, Amanda is planning for her future and choosing between summer internship offers with the hopes that one of them will lead to a job offer before she graduates.
“I don’t think I would be the student I am now at my new school if I didn’t come here first,” says Amanda. “I don’t think anyone really thinks that far ahead, but after graduating from here, I know what I want to do and where I want to be.
“Santa Ana College has made me Future Built.”
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