Week 4: All’s wool that end’s wool

Hello everybody. Late journal post this week, it has been a busy one. As an update, I am still in Dublin, Ireland currently working as an intern for the software company Dataships. Going into my third week, my responsibilities remained somewhat the same. I have been working on the list of 8000 clients that I helped create and am currently sourcing marketing executives from these companies and finding their business email addresses. From there, I am uploading the emails into our CRM software HubSpot for the sales team. Recently, I have been moving into a leadership role within my company to help the other interns. We had 4 more interns join the team with one being in the Dublin office and the others working remotely from California Therefore, a large portion of my time was spent debriefing the new “recruits” and getting them into the swing of things here at the company. After these first few weeks, I have started to observe more of the norms within the office. One thing I have noticed is that despite the loose work environment, it seems as if there is the unspoken expectation to come on time and leave on time. While everybody has the ability to work at their own pace, the startup mindset seems to have rooted itself in my cowowrkers and is rubbing onto me and my fellow interns. I personally have mixed feelings about this because for one, I am impressed and would expect that for a startup environment but for my own intern worklife, we do not get the “relaxed” environment every intern usually wants. The day-to-day pressure differs since sometimes the whole team is in the office while other days it is empty. The company embraces remote working and so I am not always sure which coworkers are coming into the office. I dislike this company norm because especially as an intern, I would like to be able to meet and chat with everyone rather than chatting over Slack. However, due to the remote nature of work, I have been adapting myself and learning how to work and communicate efficiently with teams working outside the office within Ireland and teams located in different timezones.

On Thursday of this week, I walked 25 minutes to lunch to Merrion square where every Thursday different food trucks come onto the lawn. I met up with two friends on my program and ate a delicious large hot-dog. It was incredible and I can not wait to return this Thursday.

After the workday Thursday, our program of around 30 Bucknell undergraduate students visited/attended the “Irish House Party” experience. At the beginning of the week some of the students and I thought we might be actually going to an Irish household to have a party but these predictions faded after a simple google search. We arrived at a business that has an outdoor eating/drinking area, indoor bar, restaurant upstairs, and a theater/stage in the basement. The whole experience was focused on providing an Irish cultural feeling and showcase their different traditions. We had Irish related cuisine for dinner and an live Irish music performance afterwards. In between songs, Irish stories would be told giving the audience another chance to dive into the personal culture.

I believe they succeeded in providing an authentic customer experience and are effectively monetizing Irish culture. If I was to choose a culture to capitalize off of tourists and people interested in diving into other cultures, I would create an Amish experience and locate it near Bucknell. We would partner with local Amish communities that want to share their values with the community and commercialize it to give back to the Amish community and reinvest into the program. I know that I and my friends would personally pay for this experience with the amount of Amish people we see in Lewisburg.

Going into the weekend, we had a bright and early morning makeup at 6:30 on a Saturday for our trip to Galway. We visited the Cliffs of Moher which I thought was an incredible sight since I missed the Howth Cliff walk with my friends the other weekend. It was raining but the wind and scenery made the experience enjoyable.

*top left picture features "Aidan Cassidy, Dirk Puleo, Ken Shae, Kevin Cody

*bottom middle picture features "Kevin COdy, Dirk Puleo, Aidan Cassidy, Ken Shae, Ben FInk

*bottom right picture features "Kailey Kilgallon"

Personally, I am not afraid of heights but stopping at The Burren rocks made me feel uncomfortable. People were WAYYY too close to the edge which if you fell you would most likely die due to the strong ocean waves and current. The Cliffs of Moher had barriers from the edge but this location was all up to our discretion.

We then stopped at Galway City and stayed overnight at the Kinlay Hostel which was my first time staying in a hostel. After trying to find food, we ate at Tummy Time Pizza. Something different between Dublin and Galway was the lack of food and store options. I circled around trying to find locations that had shut down or were closed at 5pm which would never happen in Dublin. The roads were a lot more narrow and most of the open businesses were on 3 primary streets in Galway. One thing that I liked better than Dublin was the monetary cost of goods. The food was less expensive and since it is a smaller city there was no need to spend money on public transport. It seemed as if the people were more friendly to us because most were locals rather than tourists in the various tourist trap bars throughout Dublin.

My favorite part of the weekend was visiting the Killary Sheep Farm in Connemara. In my previous blog post you might’ve seen the video of me and Taylor LaMantia chasing some sheep. This time, we were able to watch a herding dog do the chasing and witness how the dog is able to control and manipulate the movements of the sheep. I volunteered to help sheer one and then bottle fed some. This was definitely the highlight of my trip here so far since I am a huge animal lover.

The sheep, however, were not a fan of me since I attempted to hug them like they were my big golden retriever (Maverick) back at Home. Speaking of Maverick, I am sad that I missed him winning his first dog show!

After the jam-packed activity weekend, we woke up on Monday to learn about the US housing market and the similarities and differences to Ireland’s current housing crisis. A highlight of the class was when Professor O’Connor asked the class if anybody knows what the acronym “HUD” stands for, and without hesitation I responded with “Heads Up Display” which is far from the correct “Housing & Urban Development”. This scenario gave me the subtle reminder that I do not need to watch the new Tom Cruise Top Gun movie a third time in the UCD cinema. If you have not watched it yet….book your tickets.

Also, I finally did a load of laundry this week after 3 weeks... and I spent $26 on laundry because I couldn't figure out the machines. If I am being honest, I still am not sure if I clicked the right buttons.

This upcoming weekend I am traveling to Edinburgh, Scotland so make sure to set a reminder for the next issue of Burke’s Bulletin!

Cheers!

Miscellaneous Photos: