Life after the Leaving: ‘I wasn’t thinking about a job when filling out the CAO’

"I took the Leaving in 2009, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. I put down nursing and culinary arts, but I didn't think I wanted to do either of them. People were telling me to do nursing. I completely panicked and hadn't a clue, so that's what I put down," says Danielle Connolly (23) from Sligo.

Culinary arts was the third choice on her CAO because she liked cooking. She decided to do culinary arts at Letterkenny IT, which she had the points for, while repeating her Leaving Cert. She graduated last year.

“I loved it. I’m absolutely happy with the path I’ve taken. I wasn’t thinking about a job when filling out the CAO, I was thinking, What do I like to do? I chose something I liked to do and hoped a career would follow.”

She is interning as a product development chef at St Angela’s College, Sligo. Her job is to develop new recipes for companies.

“It’s very creative, and it’s not the 12-hour shifts you have to do as a chef in a restaurant. It’s nine to five, and I get to be a chef.”

She wants to work in product development after the internship, but the domestic jobs market is tough. She thinks she will probably have to relocate to the UK.

Connolly first heard about new product development when a lecturer mentioned it in the last year of her course.

“New product development is 100 per cent, definitely, where I want to be. It kind of happened by coincidence. I didn’t know about it when I was sitting my Leaving Cert and didn’t even know about it last year.”