During day 5, we had a speaker from Talent Hub come in to talk to us about resumes and how to better prepare ourselves for internships and jobs. She gave a lot of information about the importance of making personal connections and being a person people want to hire. She showed a video of a beer company’s unusual interview process. The main point was that we have to show interviewers that we aren’t just smart and qualified individuals, but we can also be kind, quick-thinking, and willing to work in teams.

While at Pitt, I completed the Strength Finder assessment to determine that my five top strengths, in order, are achiever, futuristic, restorative, positivity, and individualization. I feel as though all of these have helped me in some way during our trip thus far. Achievers are said to take great satisfaction in being busy and productive; clearly, we have been extremely busy during this trip! As for being futuristic, I am not sure how much this has come into play during our trip, but I do feel that the trip is making me feel even more inspired by the future and what is to come after this experience. Similarly, we have not had many issues on this trip yet so being restorative hasn’t been an issue. However, I think all that we have learned so far will help me to be even better at resolving issues in the future now. My fourth strength, positivity, is my favorite. When it has been a long day or everyone is exhausted, I feel as though I can usually try to at least brighten the mood in any way I can. Finally, I find I use my individualization strength just about every day.  I love getting to know new people for who they are and what makes them unique. I love being in groups with all different types of people and figuring out ways in which we can all bring out the best in each other.

Each strength can have a peak and a pit (or balcony and basement) to them. Ones I would like to work on while in Ireland would be the basement of positivity. Strengths Finder says that those with a strength here can sometimes come off as insincere and naive, and I would like to get to a point where people, especially of other cultures, do not see me as being insincere. Also for individualization, a balcony would be that I love finding the uniqueness in everyone, but it also makes it hard to put a group above an individual. While being in such a close group here, I hope to learn how to better attend to group needs as well.

I didn’t get many pictures today, unfortunately, but many will be coming tomorrow!!