I just finished up my 5th week in Ireland, and each week there have been discoveries. This week, my friends and I traveled to Galway for the weekend. It was a spontaneous trip, so we had nothing planned when we arrived. We walked around for a while and went to the local Cathedral. It was a great experience, but the best part was when my friends and I ended up observing the ocean from a wall. The funniest part, though, was that all of us ended up falling asleep for an hour on that wall. Overall, I had a great time and can’t wait to go to Scotland this weekend. 

Now that I have finished talking about my outside-the-office experiences, I can talk about my Internship. Over the month that I have been working at my Internship, there have been many skills I have picked up. Some I have noticed while learning them, but others I have only noticed now that I am being asked the question. I would say one hard skill that I have picked up from my internship would be HTML. I know many coding languages but have never touched HTML. Since this job has me working on a Website, it has required me to learn the language. I am grateful for this because I would have never decided to learn it on my own. It is now something I can add to my resume. Another hard skill I have picked up is Web Design. HTML allows me to code the website, but this job has also taught me how a website should look. This is not the field I want to get into in the future, but it is great to have on my resume.

Hard skills aren’t the only thing I have developed because of this internship. This internship has also taught me many soft skills that apply to future jobs and life. One major soft skill that this job has allowed me to improve on is customer service. I have worked in customer service before at a grocery store. However, most of the time, I was just conversing with customers and rarely had to fix issues. This job allows me to work with customers and work through the issues they have. It was tough for me at first, but now it just feels like any other type of task. Another soft skill that this job has allowed me to improve upon is my teamwork. I have worked jobs before, but they were always jobs that purely relied on me. This job is a lot more collaborative. There are times when we can have 3-4 people on a problem. This is an experience that I can use for all aspects of my life. 

I haven’t been learning just in the workplace, but also outside. One soft skill that I have improved upon since living here is communication. Even though we speak the same language, not everything means the same thing. There have been times when I heard a person say something, and I have no clue what they mean. That’s when I have to communicate with them and put it without being rude because I don’t know what they mean. This is an important development to have because I used to be shy when approaching people with questions. However, now that I have done it, I will have no problems. Another skill that I have learned is monetary planning. I mean, I have always cared about how much money I spent on things. However, I always had a job, so I could gain more money when needed. Here, I had a set amount of money coming in, and I had to plan how much I could spend. It’s more expensive here than in the United States, so that’s also been a challenge. 

Overall, it’s been a great experience with my internship and living in Dublin. I have been able to learn many skills throughout this experience, whether it be HTML or better Monetary practices. These skills I have learned have allowed me to succeed in living here. I know how to work with people, even if they are from a different country. It has introduced me to different cultures and allowed me to understand and learn more about them. If I had never adapted and picked up these skills, I would have never been able to survive. I only have three more weeks left, but I plan to keep on learning in those 3 weeks.