Martin Grehan
I think the great thing about Maynooth is the relationship between the town and the University. I would encourage students, if they can, to move to Maynooth and soak up that feeling of living in the only university town in Ireland, it's such a beautiful, small and close community and that's what makes it great. Some of my fondest memories are of all the random jobs I did across campus as well during my postgrad. Tutoring in the Maths Dept, the Maths Support Centre, working in the gym and for the exams. I met some lovely people, many of whom I'm still in touch with. But the joy of Maynooth is all of Maynooth, walking through Carton Estate, or lounging in the May sun outside the library, it's a great place.
I was one of the founding members of the Feminist Society back in the early 2010s, that came together in the early days of campaigining for Repeal of the 8th Amendment. Some of the people I met through that became housemates and close friends and it was a fantastic experience for a worthy cause.
The university town aspect, there's always a quiet spot to go have a walk and relax. Maynooth is busy but it's also quiet, though I was mostly based in the Maths Department so that could explain why... It's also a place where you'll know everyone even though again, there are a lot of students and staff. It gets that balance right.
I think the key experiences for me where when I was teaching, first as a staff member in between my undergrad/postgrad and then during my postgrad. Maynooth is very quick to give experience to trusthworthy but inexperienced people and to help them gain those really great experiences from teaching. Especially with maths and statistics, teaching really deepens your knowledge, a question can be on anything and this is more reflective of the workplace than any other academic experience. In my job, so much is open ended, and knowing that it's ok to not know and to ask a colleague, this really is a skill I picked up from working in the Maths Dept and the Maths Support Centre.
Maynooth is about the holistic student experience. It's the additional bits that make the student experience great, it's the Access Office providing help to those who need it, it's the little bits of work floating around that might help you cover expenses and worry less about things, the staff being friendly and approachable and most importantly grounded. Maynooth is the least ego-orientated university. And I've worked and studied in a few others, and Maynooth is all round the best university for taking on all elements of issues a student might have.
When I finished my postgrad in 2012 I continued to work in the Maths Support Centre and Maths Dept for a while. I had decided academia wasn't for me and wanted to apply my stats and data analysis skills to a social justice related job. In 2014 I did an internship with Le Chéile - Youth Mentoring. This organisation works with young offenders and they were so kind to me, I still volunteer with them. The role ended up being more about data quality and data management and helped me get a data management job with the Health Research Board, working on addiction statistics. I stayed there for three years and learned all of the basics of managing and querying a live database. In addition, I would train social work staff on how to collect data. I moved on then to work in Dublin City Council as a data analyst in their Housing Department. Here I helped establish a Data Management Unit to deal with legacy data quality issues and helped the organisation make great strides in better utilising its social housing data. In addition, I also worked on some amazing research projects on Housing Vacancy and Airbnb.
I shortly worked at DCU as a data analyst before finally securing a permanent role as a Statistician in the CSO. I work in the Health and Safety Authority, helping them with the typical data quality issues that public sector workplaces have. For me, it ticks all the boxes, the work helps generate better data which in turn helps save lives in the workplace and I'm utilising all my skills from my education at Maynooth and elsewhere.
The highlight was probably leading on a primary research project on Housing Vacancy at Dublin City Council. I had to design a street survey methodology from scratch myself. Not many researchers get to do primary research outside of certain contexts and it was great to put all of my training and education into play.
The results of the survey were really important in challenging some of the myths around vacancy that built up post the 2016 Census. Many commentators were suggesting vacancy was a solution to the housing crisis but our study showed that in Dublin City vacancy was almost impossible to identify easily. And hence solutions needed to be broader and that DCC should be better resourced to build social housing.
I got to present the results at conferences and to senior civil and public servants and I was very proud of bringing a whole research project from beginning to end, and most importantly, that it was impactful.
I work as a statistician in the CSO. I am seconded to work in the Health and Safety Authority, helping them with the typical data quality issues that public sector workplaces have. Specifically, I am responsible for analysing data quality by building dashboards in Power BI to monitor key data quality metrics (duplications of data, erroneous data entry, etc). In addition I do a lot of ad hoc reporting and data visualisation that will involve integrating multiple sets of data.
For example I might take some internal data and integrate with CSO data in a dashboard. This could involve connecting to an on-site db and via an API for the CSO data. I need to understand all of the different ways of connecting to data, without being an expert. In addition, I need to know if data can be appropriately combined, this can involve assesments of the robustness of certain data sources, reading up on the methodology behind the capture of a 3rd party data source, etc.
I would present results from analyses, to senior management and colleagues. And I would also act as a liaison for data quality with specific sections of business, so someone can contact me to ask if they think a report is flawed or producing incorrect figures and ask advice on how that might be fixed.
I love making visuals. I love to make maps as well. This is the most creative part of the job. Someone wants data but you are the one with total power over how it's presented. I love to make maps because GIS wasn't a skill that was part of my training or education and was especially relevant when I worked in housing. Often the people I liaise with in the GIS space have studied in Maynooth, I sometimes wish I'd had a chance to do the course there.
To summarise though, adding a new skill like that makes work more interesting, enjoyable and adds variety to how you can present your work. People get sick of seeing similar types of dashboards and a new type of visual or map can help overcome that.
I would say in my line of work the most important skill is to know a little bit about everything. How do you do that? Well sometimes you need to do a job that isn't the sexiest or directly applicable to what you want to do. So I took on a pure data management role before I became a data analyst. I had to do a hard slog of data entry and checking of data, sometimes manually. But this familiarised me with every single aspect of the relational database we had in that role. So later, when I was doing no data entry I was familar with the problems people faced in that role. It gave me the insight that allowed me to do my more "advanced" role better.
So do an extra course, do tangential stuff, be familiar with IT infrastructures and try and just know a tiny bit about each aspect of the data pathway. And my final advice would be, is find data you're passionate about. For me it's data that has a social good or can help bring positive change. That motivates me when I'm slogging through some code or trying to write up a list of requirements for some project and my motivation wavers. If you work in an area where the exciting part isn't exciting to you cause the data is boring or not something you care about, you will really struggle in this line of work. Do what you love! That isn't always possible but I know in my line of work there is a definite lack of data-savvy people in the public and non-profit sector. We're crying out for people like that.