Leonel is a finance student of Dublin Business School where he is studying a part-time course in Accounting and Finance at night. During the day, this Fairview man is busy working in the Accounts department of Shanahan Engineering in Blackrock, Dublin.
Describing his working day as one of “pressure, ” Leonel says he works hard, but must leave his Blackrock offices at 5. 00pm to get to his course in the city centre. He does this three days a week, enduring the inevitable stress of Dublin traffic. “Yeah, it’s very stressful to get into town on time. I have to push into the DART at Monkstown and get off at Pearse Street station. ” From there, it’s a twenty minute walk for Leonel until he gets to the class room at the Dublin Business School on Aungier Street.
When he came to Ireland earlier this year, Leonel said he had the twin aims of improving his English and of working. With his experience in the travel industry and in accountancy he found a job easily. He soon began to look around for education opportunities however. A full time course was not an option. “I had to work to keep myself in Dublin, which is a very expensive city to live in compared to my home country” he says. Too late to join the CAO process for evening courses at the state universities, this ambitious Argentine eventually signed up for the Accounting and Finance degree programme at the Dublin Business School: “I had already spent two years in the University of Rosario at home so I got exemptions and got into the second year of the Accounting and Finance course at the DBS. ”
Leonel obviously leads a very pressurised life and study opportunities are precious for this man who must divide his time between work, Dublin traffic and his university course. “It’s really hard to study at the weekends as, naturally, you want to relax after a hectic week, but I have to sit down to it and do it” he says. His squashed time-table also means that Leonel can’t socialise with his class-mates and get to know them as much as he might like to: “I arrive late in the evening and must leave then to try to get some sleep before another early morning. People know each other better any way because they’ve been together for a year longer, whereas I came straight into the second year. I’d like to know my class mates better and hopefully will”, he says.
The evening course at DBS of Accounting and Finance degree sets a combination of specialised accounting and finance subjects together with general business subjects. It covers essential financial disciplines including financial and management accounting, finance, auditing and taxation and also provides options for additional study in areas such as business policy and law.
If he successfully completes his degree, Leonel will have substantial exemptions to the final stages of professional accountancy programmes such as ACCA, ACA, CPA & CIMA.
