One month left in Ireland and one week left with my fellow interns at my firm. Last week I learned so much about the 12 interns that work at Flynn O’Driscoll with me, and I realized that I only have one more week working alongside them. Next week there will be a whole new cycle of interns coming into the firm, and I am just now realizing how grateful I am for how well they treated me over these past three weeks. Assimilating into Irish work culture was hard for me at first, but now I feel like I have a genuine grip on the environment and the people around me. I do not think I would have been able to adjust as well to the small cultural differences without them.
To be honest, I would not say there have been any dramatic workplace differences that caught me completely off guard. Part of that is because I have never had an internship at a business like this before, so I did not have a direct comparison to draw from. But even so, the biggest shift I noticed was less about the work itself and more about the pace and the attitude surrounding it. Back home, there is an unspoken pressure to always be on, always be hustling, and always be seen doing more than enough. Here, there is a different kind of professionalism. People work hard, but they also genuinely rest. They take their lunch breaks. They go for walks. They check in with each other. That mental separation between work time and personal time felt foreign to me at first, almost like I was doing something wrong by stepping away from my desk.
I remember my first week vividly. I ate lunch at my desk every single day and did not even take the full hour. I told myself I was being productive, but honestly I think I was just not comfortable enough yet to know what was normal. I did not want to seem like I was not taking the internship seriously. It took watching the people around me, specifically the other interns, to understand that taking a real break was not a sign of laziness. It was just the culture. Now I go for walks with them every single day, and those walks have honestly become one of my favorite parts of the workday.
One person I am especially grateful for is Clara. Clara is one of the law interns, she is from Cork, and she lives at UCD with us. She was one of the first people who made me feel like I actually belonged here, not just as an intern passing through, but as a person worth getting to know. Next week I will genuinely miss her because she has made my entire experience more comfortable and more fun than I ever expected.
On Friday after work, we all went to an escape room together and it was such a good time. Somewhere in the middle of trying to solve puzzles and yelling across the room at each other, I looked around and thought about how sad I was going to be when this group splits up. After the escape room we went out for dinner and spent the rest of the evening just talking and hanging out. Being able to hear about their lives, their hometowns, what they want to do after school, has been one of the most interesting and unexpected parts of this whole experience.
Part of my goal in coming to Ireland was to fully immerse myself in the culture, and that absolutely includes the people. Every day they teach me a new piece of Irish slang. My current favorite word is “grand,” which can mean anything from genuinely great to complete sarcasm for the worst day of your life, and somehow you just learn to read the room.
This week has been so much fun, and I am really upset that this marks the halfway point. But looking back on everything I have already done and everyone I have already met, I can see how much I have grown, and I know the second half is going to be just as good.