Week 3: Growing Confidence with Declining Health

Introduction For The Week

Hi guys, whether you are tuning in for another blog post or are new here, welcome! This week was definitely an eventful one for my peers and I. As a reminder, I am taking an Irish Real Estate class on Monday’s as well as completing an unpaid marketing internship Tuesday through Friday at dataships.io. This week I was able to become more comfortable and situated in my role within Dataships. I am leading/contributing on marketing projects such as finding potential clients and creating lead lists for people of interest for our advertisements. I was able to spearhead this database creation with due diligence to create effective and quality lead lists.

We had a company party on Thursday where we got off at 3:00pm and went Axe throwing as a team. I was nervous at the start because there were many company members I had not yet met, but throwing Axes at a target on a wall was surprisingly good for bonding. I had never heard of Axe throwing as a party event before and it definitely did not disappoint. I strongly recommend it!

I am working directly with a Sales Development Representative for the company that is based out of San Francisco. I keep a timezone clock bookmarked on my computer so I know when my colleague Brandon starts work in San Francisco so we can plan out his responsibilities and update him on my current progress with the database. I think it’s awesome that I have somebody who is from the states that I am communicating with, despite making a comment about the Boston Celtics losing the championships in a business zoom call…

The Start of the Weekend

After the work week we had a program schedule event called “Experience Gaelic Games.” At first, people thought we would be watching live games but their perceptions quickly changed when we learned we’d actually be participating in them. Luckily for me, I was not tired from a long Friday night so I was energized and excited to get competitive. For the past three weeks I have been battling an ear infection in my right ear as well as a cold. My first plan of action was to walk thirty minutes to the suggested hospital urgent care which told me (after waiting an hour) that they do not do walk-in appointments and I would need a negative Covid-19 test prior to the appointment.

After communicating with one of our chaperones, Dean Kepner, and our program representative, I called a service called “Doctor on Duty” who wrote me a prescription.

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The Gaelic Games were a blast in my opinion. We were able to play Hurling, Gaelic Football, and Handball. While there was not one sport I was substantially better at, being able to play all three was an awesome experience. Not often do you get to learn the rules and play an entirely new sport with a bunch of friends. My favorite was Gaelic Football personally because I played soccer in highschool so that coordination definitely helped with my success during the games.

We had two instructors teaching us and my team was lucky to have the young instructor on our team that was incredible at all three games and would complete perfect passes to myself and Miles Barrett’s we sprinted up the field. As a team, the instructor stood out as a leader since everybody respected his experience and since Hurling and Gaelic Football require a lot of passes, there was ongoing communication while playing. Due to this consistent communication, I was forced to learn more of the names of other participants in this “Bucknell-In” program.

This Week’s Irish Real Estate Class

For this week’s Irish Real Estate class, we had Ronan Lyons teach today’s session. Monday, June 20th, which I consider as the end of the week for my journals instead of the first. Professor Lyons, who teaches at Trinity University, has been my favorite visiting professor this summer semester where he continued the conversation on Ireland’s housing market and the increase/decrease of development. My favorite part of his lecture was him describing the factors that increased and decreased housing development as well as prices. In regards to housing development, if you built in the urban areas of Ireland, you could write off the cost of construction on your tax bill which incentivized new development. This was because Ireland was one of the least urbanized countries in Europe due to their focus on being an agricultural society. For housing prices, when the political battle between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, people living near the borders and consistently traveling over them got nervous with the conflict and tried to move away. This caused the price of their homes to decrease drastically affecting the Irish housing market.

After class, a group of us went to visit “Forty Foot” which is an area on rocks on the ocean for swimming and jumping. Due to my ear infection I could not partake in the swimming but I still had a blast. Afterwards, we ate at Flash Harry’s which had an amazing atmosphere and delicious food. The group definitely agreed to return to this place since it was very close to campus and only a ten minute bus ride away.

So far this week has been better than the previous and it seems that my time in Dublin is getting better and better as time goes on. Below are some other anecdotes and experiences I was able to do this week.

Extra Anecdotes/Experiences This Week

My company went to the 2022 Dublin Tech Summit to see our CEO speak! This was an incredible experience to see and speak with other people in the tech industry and learn about both large and small companies. The Tickets were $350 but since our CEO was speaking, I was able to go to this opportunity free of charge!

On Saturday while many of my friends went to the Howth Cliff walk, I was able to go to “Van Gogh Dublin: The Immersive Experience”. While I had seen some previous on social media, the experience was not as I had expected and the production setup was impressive!

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Some news I read about Ireland this week:

Health officials warn Ireland is experiencing summer Covid wave

As the headline suggests, Covid-19 is making its way across Ireland lately. This is important to my experience because it could mean that I might have to do my internship remotely. This also gives me the sense of uncertainty because of the possibility of me contracting Covid-19 and needing to self-quarantine myself. I am choosing this news article for this week because some people in our program have recently felt ~sick~. This means that I might personally have contracted the virus which would add onto my already poor health experience here in Dublin. If Covid-19 levels get too high it could hurt the economy in Ireland if Ireland/Dublin decides to enact a lockdown and or social restrictions. This could cause both social and political conflict in the city which I do not want to find myself caught in the middle of this summer.