Patrick Donohoe

News Editor at Irish Farmers Journal

Patrick Donohoe always had a love for English which led him to study Arts at UCD. “I got an A1 in my Leaving Cert and went on to study English and history in UCD. I majored in English and minored in history, and in first year i did an elective in psychology,” Patrick says.

“College was a different ballgame altogether. There was a stack of books that you had to read and I really didn’t have the patience for it. I wasn’t suited to college, I was more suited to working hard, but Arts definitely helped me focus the mind,” he explains.

“With Arts you might only have nine or 10 hours’ lectures in a week, and you have all the work outside these hours. So you have to have an enormous amount of self-discipline just to sit down and read a stack of books and put it into a certain amount of words.

“That helps my job now, taking a 1,000-word report on something from Brussels and being able to get the nugget you need from it. I suppose my office skills prior to college wouldn’t have been great either. I wouldn’t have had a clue about Microsoft Word or Excel, and I became pretty efficient at that too.”

Throughout his time at university Patrick wrote a bit for the college newspaper and, towards the end of his degree, he got a week’s work placement in Bill O’Herlihy’s PR company, O’Herlihy Communications, where he impressed and was offered a summer internship.

“I am a huge fan of internships. As a whole, I think they work. It opened the door for me. I wasn’t paid much, I worked every hour I could. I was working in the sports section, and my boss was going on holidays in August – so I had to run the place for the week. Those were the chances I was given and I subscribed fully,” Patrick enthuses.

He was offered a job with the company and stayed there for four years.

Patrick worked in PR positions in other companies, including the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association, before really focusing his attention on journalism, freelancing for the Irish Examiner and Irish Farmers Journal, where he joined as a news correspondent in May 2013.

In June 2015 Patrick interviewed for the role of news editor and got the position. One piece of advice he has for someone looking to follow a similar route is to never stop learning.

“You know, get your Arts degree, and get a second degree or a postgrad or master’s and then get a third skill that doesn’t require the use of a mobile phone – like become a barber or butcher, something that’s hands-on and gets you away from phones and emails,” he urges.

Patrick believes that Arts is a stepping stone towards a career, and one of the most indispensable skills it gave him was the emotional intelligence to interact with people.

“Journalism is about people and people’s stories, and whatever kind of evolution we are going through with social media, it will always remain about people and people’s stories.”CL

Aoife Kane

Events Manager, Green Life Events

“If some day my daughter (who is one year old) said she wanted to do Arts in the morning, I would be like ‘brilliant’. It’s a great place to start your career.” So says events manager Aoife Kane, who is currently working in events management with Green Life Events, based in Sandyford, Co Dublin.

The Kerry native, who now lives in Dublin, says she chose to do an Arts degree because she felt it provided her with a lot of options. “I did sociology, politics, and legal science in NUI Galway. The Arts degree offered me the legal aspect, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do straight law.”

Aoife admits she found settling in hard in her first year. “There were over 500 in my year, so it was hard to find your feet. It was only into third year that I finally settled down. We started doing smaller class stuff and I realised we were all in the same boat.”

When she finished her degree, Aoife wanted to do a Master’s. “Once I graduated I went straight to the guidance councillor’s office in Galway and he outlined all the Master’s options. I didn’t realise there were so many from an Arts degree that could bridge the gap into so many different industries.”

Choosing to do a Master’s in PR, Aoife definitely credits her Arts degree with helping her learn valuable skills, which she used throughout her Master’s and still uses in her career to date. “I have lots of skills from my degree: research skills, language skills, management skills. I think dealing with research has helped me. In college we would have had to go to multiple sources for information and now, when I’m doing projects – which are obviously completely different material and content – I can still use the same process and procedure.”

As far as recommending an Arts degree to students, Aoife says: “I would recommend it as a life skill and I would encourage those who like to understand a broad range of subjects. It gives you a good basis for any type of further education.”

Aoife gives one final word of caution to students, suggesting that Arts isn’t necessarily for everyone. “I think a lot of people do Arts because they don’t know what else to do. Doing it just for the sake of having a degree doesn’t work. It doesn’t necessarily have to be what you see yourself doing in the end, but you really have to have some sort of vision in your mind.”