Though I landed in Dublin almost 24 hours ago the time has flown by. Taking the AirCoach from Dublin Airport was an interesting experience as I had never ridden on a bus like that before. Having to buy a ticket and store my luggage under the bus was not something I had thought about needing to do so that was a great learning experience for me. I also had to buy a sim card for my phone and finding that I could buy them from a sim card vending machine and put them in my phone myself was very cool to me. Getting from the airport to UCD and then settling into my room took some time but I know that I haven’t even gotten started with my true time in Dublin yet. There will be things for me to do everyday to allow me to settle in during this first week and I am looking forward to the planned activities.
Once the intro week is over, I will be starting my internship at Casey Kennedy Estate agents next Monday. I am excited to start working with them as they have some very interesting projects for me to work on and I feel as though I can learn a lot. Casey Kennedy is a real estate firm that participates in buying selling and renting out properties so there are many different areas of information I will need to learn about. Though I wont be selling or buying anything myself, to do well in this field it is important to be personable and knowledgeable on the happenings in the market as fluctuations and historical data can allow you to potentially predict where prices may be going.
Analyzing data like that will be one of the projects that will be assigned to me and that is very exciting. Analysis is something I really enjoy and find interesting. Taking all the many different factors, some you would think of right away and others you wouldn’t even relate to the problem at first from past present and future , and use them to draw conclusions is something that I really enjoy doing.
A unique aspect of working in the real estate field in Ireland is Irelands interesting housing history. Having had a housing crash like the US in 2008-2009, housing prices fell for a few years but now are beginning to get close to their original highs that they had over 10 years ago. There are many interesting metrics to look at this through, with a demand for housing increasing, an increase in building projects, and in increase in price, it is interesting to think about what the market could potentially look like going forward.
The second project I will be working on is relating to real estate management software. I will be looking over it and finding ways to make it more user friendly. This is a project that will dip close to sales and marketing which is something that I don’t have a lot of experience in. That is exciting as these are important skills that can apply to many potential paths I may go down and I am interested in gaining as much knowledge through this project as I can.
An important skill I will need no matter the project is the ability to learn about and understand my coworkers. If I don’t put an effort into learning about them and having a professional relationship with them it will be much harder for me to learn from them and ask questions when I don’t understand something. There is a lot I need to learn since this is my first time doing work in this area and in my opinion there is no greater place to start learning than from observing someone who is more experienced than you. I know that the Irish work environment differs from the American one so I will need to adapt to the differences in interpersonal communication.
From writing this post I have realized that there is a lot I need to learn in order to succeed during my time here and I think that’s great. I will know more specifics of my role and my feelings towards it as time goes on and as I begin my internship, but if I were doing something I was already confident in I feel as though I wouldn’t gain nearly as much from this experience.