Here I am on this fine Monday night writing what I thought was my final assignment for this course. I am back home in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, back in the United States. It really is a crazy thing. I remember first seeing the notification pop up on my phone in the morning from Katya Slater, my business intro course professor who was promoting this program. I sent it to my dad immediately and thought this was the perfect opportunity for me to hit two birds with one stone, studying abroad and getting my first internship experience. I never wanted to do a mainmester away from Pitt, I think I would miss it way too much and get serious fomo from not being able to participate in the cool activities during the school year like in my sorority and business fraternity, plus it would not have gone over so well with my job. Anyway, it feels like yesterday I was going through my EUSA student handbook and getting on the zoom meetings for more information, booking my flight, and nervously saying goodbye to my family at the airport. And here I am!!! Back where I started, back to where my summers usually are. Sorry, I can’t seem to fathom it.
Anyway, the experience was genuinely once in a lifetime, and I tried to continuously remind myself of that every second I was in Ireland. If people wanted to go somewhere or do something, or try something new I would always say yes because why not, when else am I going to be 20 in Ireland with some other pretty cool Pitt people? Never.
Now that I am back home, I get to show everyone all the 3,000 photos I took in the last 2 months to show them all the places I have been and get to give them the souvenirs I brought home for them! What a full-circle moment, if you will.
In regards to my host culture and their definition of ‘success’ in a professional sense, I really do not see it being much different than in the United States. The owner of my company, Ronan, at MoveHome, is a very successful and driven man in and of himself; I have genuinely never met anyone like him. While his greatest competition is the larger real estate firms in the areas that surround his, now, singular office space, he remains to be prominent and distinctive with his unusual business ways, which is precisely what makes him successful. The firms in the area have various office spaces and sell and let in larger geographical areas than MoveHome does, but it also makes them less likely to be personable and prove themselves to really care for what their customer wants and needs. Ronan would describe success as having more properties for sale and to let on his website for the public eye to see and say, oh, they are a trusted firm, people trust them to sell their property so why not buy from them? Ireland in general would likely define success in a professional sense as being personable and genuinely trying to form a connection with a person or a business in order to create some sort of transaction that is beneficial for both parties.
In my internship specifically, showing initiative was super important to express interest and would certainly make a successful and effective employee. Asking the supervisor for more tasks to work on and other coworkers to go on valuation and photoshoot appointments with them definitely would make you successful, especially in the eyes of the supervisor. In the real estate industry in general, I think the biggest thing to know to be successful is that first impressions last. They genuinely do, and Ronan made note of this quite a lot in my time there. He would talk about smaller things, like clothes and styles and appearance (his were always impressive), and he would even take note of the clothing I wore which I managed to maintain a professional, business casual attire for the time I was there. On a larger scale, Ronan’s window displays are the main first impression his company makes on an outward appearance before you even step foot inside. They show a positive and inviting appearance to draw you in, making it a very effective tactic. I think comparatively in America, appearance is not always something that is kept and maintained properly. In the real estate business, this is super important in selling homes and such, and in Ireland, it was super important.
