As week five comes around, I have been grappling with the realization that I am already halfway done with my time in Ireland, working at D-Light Studios and living on the University College Dublin’s campus. Oddly enough, it feels like I’ve only just begun my time here, while also feeling like I’ve lived here forever. Admittedly, before I arrived in Dublin, I was a little nervous about the whole idea. Will I be homesick? Will I make friends alright? Will I like my internship? Thankfully, my fears subsided soon after I arrived. I made friends on campus pretty easily, and that made the process of adjusting to Dublin much easier. Although I still have a lot to learn, I feel like I have done a good job of adapting to this new landscape and culture so far. I think this experience will remain valuable to me going forward, as it feels like a stepping stone for future travels and business trips. However, I did not only learn how to adapt to a new place. I learned many soft and hard skills that are valuable in the workplace as well.
During my time in Ireland so far, I have developed a number of soft skills through working at my internship, as well as travelling the country and exploring the city of Dublin. One specific soft skill that I have already talked about at great lengths during my blog posts is cultural adaptability. Before this program, I had only ever been in the United States and Canada before, two countries that are relatively similar to each other for the most part. There were many changes that I needed to adapt to here, but I read the Culture Smart: Dublin book and learned more over time. I feel as though going through this process has prepared me for more travels in the future, and I have a more open-minded approach to new places and situations that I may have been hesitant about previously. Building off of the cultural barrier that I faced moving to Ireland, my communication skills have also improved since I started my internship. I think I already had pretty good communication skills before I came here, however being in a new environment helped improve them even more. Along with the cultural differences comes different dialects, phrases, and topics of discussion that I would not be used to in an American workplace. Learning to effectively communicate with people who may be talking about things that I do not understand will help me communicate more clearly in a global setting, and even better in the United States. My time management is another soft skill that I believe I have improved upon greatly since arriving here. Procrastination has always been a major problem of mine, often waiting until the last minute to do assignments. However, working at D-Light Studios has helped me with this issue. Working on a mix of multiple long term and short-term projects, I needed to step up and set the proper time aside for all of these tasks. I have noticed that ever since I started allotting time for my work, it has begun affecting the way I spend my time outside of work too. I’ve been more timely in cleaning dishes, doing laundry, and even doing blog posts. My time abroad hasn’t only affected my soft skills, though.
I have also improved my technical skills since coming to Dublin about a month ago. Throughout my time at D-Light Studios so far, I have learned new marketing skills as well as improving upon other ones that I already possessed. For example, I have learned a lot about Search Engine Optimization and website design, which I did not know much about at all before. I had to research articles about the best strategies for search engine optimization online and translate these to website changes via SquareSpace. I also learned to utilize Ahrefs’ Dashboard, Site Audit, and Keyword Explorer tools, getting better feedback about the website’s issues and what can be done to fix them. On top of this, I had to learn the ropes of Sage Accounting, an online accounting tool, to ensure that D-Light was charging the proper rates for studio hours, making sure that value added tax was not automatically included. I also worked on some other business skills, such as social media, Microsoft Excel, and Canva that I already had some experience with. I have made various spreadsheets for D-Light and have taken a role in managing their Instagram account. Overall, I feel like I have gained many soft and hard skills during my internship so far.