National College of Ireland is working with the North East Inner City (NEIC) to help place Transition Year students into meaningful work experience roles.
This is a guest post from a Marino College student, Miruna Simandi (pictured above with NCI students at our recent CAO Open Day), discussing her experience on the programme so far.
In Transition Year, you get the chance to start figuring out what route you want to follow in the future. Due to National College of Ireland’s huge range of connections, they decided to link up with local schools and help Transition Year students get work placements. Luckily my school was one of them! I've already had numerous opportunities to experience a variety of different careers, work environments and jobs.
I've found I have an interest in a few different career paths such as: children’s and general nursing, psychology, marketing and law. Now that I've identified my career interests, I can keep an eye out for any work experience opportunities in those categories that may come up. So far, I’ve done work experience with A&L Goodbody, An Garda Síochána and now I've worked on events, marketing and timetabling in National College of Ireland.
Work experience is great because you always gain new skills. Timetabling taught me the importance of using Excel properly, and Marketing has shown me the value of clear communication. My work at NCI let me try things I didn't know I could do, showed me just how important common sense is and gave me the chance to use my creativity.
Being a Transition Year student means you have to be open and try to say “yes” to everything. It’s a year where you get to try new things and experiment, find out what you like and don’t like. I would highly recommend to other TY students out there to give everything a chance, even if you think you don’t have an interest in that category of work. Give it a shot and make the best out of it and at the end of the day you’ll know if it’s for you or not. You’ll have a broad range of experience gained, which will definitely look amazing on your CV when trying to get a job.
I came into NCI thinking I didn’t have much of an interest in IT or Business but I gave it my time and attention and it turned out to be better than I expected. I still see myself following a medical career path, however what I learned from Marketing and Timetabling could help me at any point in my life, whether to work out a sensible study schedule heading into Leaving Cert or even trying to sell my own product in the future.
The NEIC work experience programme will be running again next term. If your company would like to provide a meaningful work placement for these Transition Year students, please get in touch with NEIC Work Experience Placement Coordinator John Ruigrok on john.ruigrok@ncirl.ie.
