Before coming to Ireland I have always had a deep drive to succeed in everything that I do. Walking into Dublin I didn’t exactly know what success in this internship would look like. There are so many different measures of success, but my standards have always been extremely high. That being said, I truly believe that my Ireland internship has been a success story.

One of the things that stood out to me most this summer was how differently success gets defined here compared to at home. In the US, especially in finance, success can feel like it is measured in hours logged, titles earned, and how loudly you can advocate for yourself. At Flynn O’Driscoll, success looked much quieter. It was measured in reliability, precision, and how well you worked with the people around you. Nobody was keeping score of who stayed latest or who spoke up most in a meeting. Instead, the employees who were most respected were the ones who did careful, consistent work and who made themselves genuinely useful to their team, no matter how small the task.

That shift changed how I thought about being an effective employee in this industry. A successful person at Flynn O’Driscoll was not necessarily the most outspoken person in the room. They were the person others could hand something to and trust it would come back done right. Laura in HR modeled this for me constantly. She never needed to prove she was busy or important, she simply made sure things ran smoothly and that people felt supported. That is a very different picture of leadership than the one I grew up with, where being a “successful” employee often meant being visibly assertive and personality driven.

The last week of my internship I knew that I wanted to wrap up as many projects as possible. Last week I wrote about one of my assignments being extremely difficult for me. Although some of my tasks were harder than others, I did my best to put full effort into all of them and to complete them all with equal effort. Even when I was given small tasks such as reorganizing documents in a filing cabinet, I went through each folder with care and labelled everything with color coded sticky notes. It is this precision that I put into every task that makes me believe that these past two months have been a success, and it is exactly the kind of behavior that earned respect in an Irish workplace: showing up fully for the small things, not just the impressive ones.

I wanted personal and professional growth from this internship, and I believe that I have achieved both of these goals. I have talked a lot about my professional growth throughout these blogs, but I believe that my personal growth has also been just as important. I have always been an outgoing person. I do not think I have ever been shy a day in my life. My personal success has mainly been the fact that I have learned so much about other people and how others view the world. Being able to understand yourself is one thing, but to see the world from another perspective is far more valuable.

Leaving Dublin this Saturday was extremely difficult for me. So many people in my group were ready to go home, but I had a deep feeling that this trip is only the beginning of my story in Ireland. I have done a lot of research and I am considering doing my master’s in Dublin. I have loved my time here so much that I do not want to leave or have my story end here. Flynn O’Driscoll was the best experience for an internship that I could have asked for (I have a feeling they will miss me as much as I miss them). When people asked me “Why Dublin?” I never really knew how to answer that question before. It was always just a gut feeling pulling me to Ireland. After spending two months here, I know why. Ireland has truly felt like a home to me. I have traveled to many cities in both the US and abroad, but I have never felt so drawn to a place the way I do to Dublin. My personality just fits, and that feeling alone is enough to make me want to stay. Obviously I have to go back and finish my degree, but now I know there is a place for me in the world that makes me feel at home even when I am thousands of miles away.

So, if you ask me whether I was a successful employee, I would say yes. But more importantly, I was successful in every aspect while living abroad. The main reason people should go abroad is to experience the world and to see if there is a chance you might love the city you picked more than expected. I never thought I would walk out of this internship with the gut feeling that I will be back. If I have learned anything from my gut feelings, it is that I absolutely have to follow them. So yes, this may be my goodbye to Dublin, but maybe it is really just “see you next time.”