Nearing The End

I have lived in Dublin for only 211 days, and have only 5 left. You see, I came up to Dublin as a somewhat innocent student just out of college, to start working for what is probably one of the best companies in Ireland. Or so I thought. You see, I did the graduate programme with Accenture. I know its bad to mention employers, but I no longer work for them and don't intend to do so in the future again. Besides, what I am about to say is known to them. I've told them how I feel. The only thing I haven't told them is that I'm blogging about it.

I have lived all my life in Cork, including going to UCC. I don't regret going to UCC as its a great college, but now that I'm done, I realise that I must move on and out of Cork. During my final year of BIS, I applied to about 15-20 London based companies. e.g. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank etc. I got interviews for most of them and spent half my time in London interviewing, but didn't get a job. So I applied to Accenture, the only Irish company I applied to. And low and behold, I got a job. I had heard many good things about them, namely they're massive and the money is as good as it gets for an Irish graduate.

But I was wrong. They grind you to the bone, expecting you to sign away your life working god awful hours. For the past 2 months, I was working from about 9am to at least 8pm, if not 10pm. And if you left early, they made you feel guilty. The people I worked there were nice, but man, the conditions were crap.

Luckily for me, all these applications in London actually got me something - an internship with Credit Suisse First Boston. I got on amazing last summer, and a few months ago, they offered me a full time job starting in July. While Accenture was a good job by Irish and Dublin standards, compared to CSFB, it was rubbish. Everything about the job was better - working hours, offices, money, benefits and most importantly, it was in London, somewhere I wanted to go straight out of college. Unfortunately, that didnt work out, but I did get to experience Dublin and the consulting lifestyle. I thought it would be great travelling around working for different clients everywhere, but it soon wore off. So when the London job offer came through, it was an easy decision. I didnt enjoy leaving the job and the people, but it is such a better opportunity.

So, this new job of mine starts in July, and having finished with Accenture on Friday last, this leaves me with almost 4 months free time. And man am I going to take advantage of it.

The plan (which I think I've already mentioned here) is to go to Orlando, Florida, then onto Buenos Aires, Argentina, then into Brazil, then Bolivia and then back into Argentina. After that, I'm off to Santiago, Chile and back to Miami, Florida to meet some more friends. Then its across the States to San Francisco, California to visit yet another friend for about a week. Then I'm flying back home to Cork.

All in all, its about 8 weeks long, costing about €1,400 for flights, but I think completely worth it! I'm going to set up a new blog just for my travels, so you can all keep up-to-date.

I'm currently in Dublin just bumming around, sorting stuff out, but the clock is ticking. I've enjoyed my time here, but London calls! Its a shame I didnt get a chance to experience Dublin more because of my ridiculuous hours, but hey, its an experience!