Eoin Burke
So many to mention honestly, probably my involvement in clubs and societies. I ran for Welfare and Equality Officer with the Maynooth Students' Union and found this to be a great experience! Overall I liked how varied my time in Maynooth was, I think the modules available in both the geography and sociology departments helped with this a lot.
I was involved with the Tea Society and the Mental Health Society. I loved them both, but the Mental Health Society won an award during my time there. It helped me learn what I wanted to do in my career. I was also very honoured to be published in the Milieu magazine (2018 I think it was).
The different types of people you will meet. Lots of many different opinions. I found myself being challenged and learning to think about my outlook and not take things at face value so much
My openness and willingness to engage with new ideas, topics and experiences. I have a lot more confidence in different environments now and am very comfortable sharing spaces with people different to me.
I think Maynooth really has a great variety in the courses available and is a very welcoming environment, so it usually is a good fit for many. There is also a great sense of community there.
After finished my BA in Maynooth, I decided to further my studies in University of Limerick. I was offered a place in Maynooth's Spacial justice masters, which I know I would have loved. I'm still tempted to go back and do it at some point. But I'd lived in Maynooth my whole life so thought Limerick would be a welcome change and a new challenge. I did a masters there in Youth, Community and Social Regeneration, which I loved. I worked as a carer for people with intellectual disabilities during my time in Maynooth. I found this challenging but extremely rewarding. I ended up doing very similar work after finishing my masters in UL and became a programme facilitator. During my time in UL, I was an undergraduate tutor for sociology, and I found my presentation skills from Maynooth helped me excel at this a lot (especially those learned from Dr. Adrian Kavanagh's political geography classes). I'm currently in a role that I think combines a lot of my educational and work experiences. I'm an outreach worker for county Clare and north Tipperary for an NGO named GOSHH, which stands for Gender, Orientation, Sexual Health and HIV. I recalled enjoyed my rural geography module in Maynooth and think it has a huge relevance to what I do. I work with people of diverse genders and orientations, and I think my awareness of different experiences folks have around this became clear while learning about queer geography in my geography of film class with Dr. Karen Till.
Definitely landing my current job. Specifically finding my feet in it and feeling a confidence boost when clients came back and engaged with me.
We are a person-centred organisation so this means the work can vary depending on the needs of the clients and the community we work with. My priorities are usually based around one to one support, but I also try to create news ways to engage people with our services more. We have a community development officer who does this as part of her role too. This can be created different events, courses and programs. I also provide training on gender and orientation for adults, professionals and young people/students. We have a rapid testing program for HIV, syphalis and Hep C which I'm sometimes involved in. I find this part very rewarding and although I found medical geography quite challenging, it gave me a good insight into the impacts of epidemics (as well as funding and stigma).
Definitely the one-to-one support. This can be so varied and with so many different types of people.
I wasn't actually looking for a job to be honest, I was very content in my role as programme facilitator for people with intellectual disabilities, but GOSHH was an organisation I had an awareness off ever since moving to Limerick. As an LGBTQ+ community member myself, I feel extremely lucky to be in a position where I can help others. I subscribed to GOSHH's newsletter and saw that they were hiring. It was such a rare opportunity and I just had to go for it.
First of all, go for it. Apply for jobs. Give them some time. Go to interviews and try your best. You have a lot of experience from your classes in Maynooth. I wouldn't take them for granted, show them off. I would also say that I spent a lot of time talking about my extra curricular activities during my interview for my current job. The Mental Health Society was something I was so passionate about, and employers can see this.