Keryn Duggan
I started first year on an Entrance Scholarship, for doing well in my Leaving Cert which gave me the opportunity to meet like minded students early on.
The highlight from my time at Maynooth is definitely the friends that I made throughout my time there, we all helped each other through our assignments and exams and since graduating in 2017, they still form a large part of my group of friends.
My experience at Maynooth, the module availability/variety and the required 6 month internship definitely provided me with huge opportunities to start my career on the right foot.
Go to your lectures! Lecturers are much more likely to be helpful if they know your face and have seen you in their classes. Don't be afraid to ask for help, no one will know you need it until you ask. Make connections with students in your course in years above, they will have good advice on module selection and might help you with an assignment or two!
One of the reasons I chose this course was because of the 6 month internship that was required in third year. This gave me the opportunity to experience real implementations of my studies while still being a student. I interned with SIG, a proprietary trading firm, for 6 months and the team offered me a graduate role to come back to once I had completed my 4th year, which was amazing to be able to concentrate on my studies for final year and not have to worry about interviewing for a grad job.
After graduation, I returned to SIG, and really solidified my foundation in both software engineering and the finance sector. After 5 years with SIG I decided I needed a change, not just in job but also in location - I moved to Canada and went travelling for 8 months. In 2023, I settled in Toronto and started working for a hedge fund called Balyasny Asset Management.
The most challenging part of this career is the accepting the fact that you will never know everything in software engineering. This field is forever evolving and changing so trying to keep on top of the latest trends is really difficult. It took me a long time to accept that I have my core area of knowledge and what I know I'm good at, and anything beyond that I know I can learn if I need to.
Maynooth, along with technical skills, also taught me a lot of valuable soft skills - presentations, communication, mentoring opportunities both within software engineering and outside it. All of these are necessary to really excel in a software engineering career.
Making connections with other students both in years above and below will expand your network, helping both while you're still a student but also throughout your career if you ever need a referral from an old friend!
I did a lot of volunteering/mentoring in my time at Maynooth - I helped in the Programming Support Centre, I volunteered with CoderDojo (a kids programming camp). I also signed up to be a lab demonstrator which involved teaching modules from years below. This was a huge advantage when starting my career because I had already learned the skills for mentoring and teaching interns, graduates and new joiners on my team. All of these are good for your CV too!