Several people have turned a transition- year project into the makings of a glorious career. Gráinne Faller meets some of them

It's after mid-term and you're well into the swing of this transition year business. Some people are already getting lots out of it, others may have settled into the business of dossing. That end of things is up to the individual more than anything else. Many students don't give transition year too much thought. Lots of projects, a couple of trips and that's the height of it for most.

But did you ever think that this could be the year that changes your life? That a TY project could become something more? It has happened, and it could well happen to you. These are just a few people whose fortunes and careers sprang from transition-year projects and opportunities.

Dublin native Brian Fallon set up Daft.ie 10 years ago. It was his transition year mini-company in St Mary's College, Rathmines. Daft is now Ireland's biggest property website and is estimated to be worth millions.

"When I was in fourth year, everyone had to set up a business. It was part of a competition run by Dublin City Enterprise Board. I set up Daft, mainly because my sister was moving out and she was finding it really hard to get a place. She'd work till six and by the time she'd get the Herald and go to view a place it would be already gone. I think in those days the Herald ran ads for two days regardless of whether the property was taken or not.

"The website was always going to end after three months when the competition finished - I got through the regional finals with it but lost out in the end. There were hundreds of people using it by then, lots of landlords and estate agents, and it just seemed like a good idea to keep it running. I remember one day, the website stopped working and this estate agent rang me when I was on my way to school. I still don't know how he got my number! But anyway, I thought that this website was something serious. I suppose it became something of a summer job. I worked on it every summer and it just got bigger. It had quadrupled in size each year and I had to put in a lot of work to make it survive.

"After leaving school I didn't want to go straight into running the website, so I went to college and studied engineering in Trinity. My brother Eamonn who co-owns the site went off to Australia for a time so when I graduated and he came back, we decided to give it a go and turn it into a proper commercial venture.

"The site was extremely popular with renters but we had noticed that there wasn't much in the way of property for first-time buyers on the web. Our mantra was that we wanted to grow up with our audience. Estate agents and letting agents were already using Daft and often they had property on their books that was exactly what first-time buyers would be looking for.

"It just grew further and further from there. We started a commercial property section when myself and Eamonn were looking for an office and we found it difficult to find suitable places. It was a huge hit. I suppose I'm a bit shocked at how big it has become. In May we were shown to be the biggest website in Ireland, and all from a transition-year project!"

RUTH GILLIGAN HAS featured in the education pages before. She completed her Leaving Cert earlier this year, and her debut novel, Forget, reached number one in the Irish best-sellers list. She wrote the book as part of a transition-year project in her school, St Andrew's, Booterstown.

"When you're in transition year in our school, you have a million things going on. We actually have a really, really good programme in our school and transition year is compulsory . . . But this wasn't to do with any particular class or anything, just at the start of the year you're told, 'Right. Project, 50 pages, no barriers or titles, have it in for March.' That was it. We would get reminders every month or so, so that we wouldn't leave it to the last minute - which everyone clearly did! - but we were just left to our own devices . . . People did all sorts of stuff like the second World War and the Kennedy family. One guy wrote an entire symphony!

"I didn't know what to do at first, but writing a book is something I've always wanted to do. But I never would have sat down at home and been like, 'I want to write a book.' I need a deadline to work to, and now I had it. I said, 'Ah sure, I'll see how I go.' So then I bought my little How to Write a Novel book and joined a website that sent me daily tips which I completely ignored. For the rest of transition year I wrote it, and a couple of my friends read it, and my Mum read it.

"Patricia Scanlan was a friend of a friend of my Mum's. She read it and was like, 'Okay this needs a lot of work . . . but you have a voice,' and I was like, 'Ooh, how glamorous!' She got in touch with me and I'd go to her place for lunch and she'd go through it with me. She was amazing.

"She was honest with me too, because she said, 'There's no point in faffing around because this could actually go places,' and once someone says that to you . . . even though the eight months when I wrote it were really busy, the later it got, into fifth year and sixth year, I was still rewriting bits and tweaking bits, and the ending kind of changed.

"I was still working on it well into sixth year. Even when I signed the contract, I was like, 'Right, this is going into the shops so this needs to be the best that it can be.' I wrote something that I would like to read, because when you're 17 or 18 you either have these really juvenile young teenage books or you have Patricia Scanlan and Marian Keyes, which are really good - but why can't there be books like that for our age, because we've got cool lives?!

"Patricia passed it on [to the publisher] in fifth year at some stage and they read it and said it was good but that it needed a lot of work, which it did . . . They sent me away with a load of stuff to do, so last summer that was my summer project.

"I'd be a huge advocate for transition year. It does depend on the school but you can make something out of everything. If I had just gone from third to fifth year or if I had just been lazy I wouldn't be on the bestsellers list now. You take these opportunities. It is a year for doing those things that you might not otherwise do."

JUST LAST YEAR, Kilkenny natives Tara McGrath, Vanessa McGrath and Nicola Woodgate, transition-year students in the Presentation College, Loughboy, created a problem-solving board game and software prototype called "Inventing Machine Fun Triz for Kids". This was a simplification of a complicated problem-solving methodology called Triz. Intel took note and invited all three as interns to make improvements on their own Triz programme, which teaches engineers to use the methodology to solve problems. Tara is improving the project for next year's BT Young Scientists' Exhibition. She explains what happened last year.

"I had been in the BT Young Scientists' Exhibition for the past two years and it was the best craic ever. I really wanted to enter again but I couldn't think of a project to do. I was desperate for ideas when I came across Triz, which is basically this Russian theory of inventive thinking. It's a methodology for problem-solving and there are 40 different principles to it but it's really complicated . . . We couldn't really understand it too well so we simplified it a bit and then I thought, 'Why not simplify it for kids?' So we made Fun Triz, which is an inventing machine that helps children with problem-solving.

"The Triz theory is becoming really big in companies because it's so good for problem-solving. It's a fantastic theory but companies often find that engineers can't quite grasp it. The problem is the more specialised you are in one area, the less likely you are to think outside of the box, which is what a lot of problems need. We were runners-up in the group category in the Young Scientists' Exhibition this year but a guy from Intel saw our project that teaches Triz to kids . . . He questioned us about Triz and he said people who had been teaching the Intel course on Triz for the past year didn't understand it as well as we did.

"Intel invited us for a two-week internship and we went on a Triz training course with 40 engineers. It was really fantastic and on the second week they asked us to help with changes to the course . . . We found out how hard it is for people like engineers to grasp Triz. It was actually much easier for us to simplify. When you're 15 years old and you don't understand what a big long word means, it's easy to ask, 'What does that mean?' and to segment a problem into different parts.

"I'm going to be working on it again for the Young Scientists' Exhibition this year. We're all in different classes so I'm not sure if we'll be working together this year. I haven't been in contact with Intel since but I would say 'Watch this space!'

The ABC of Bulgaria

On January 1st, Bulgaria will enter the European Union as a new member state.

To mark this, the European Commission Representation in Ireland will host workshops on the Cyrillic alphabet, organised by the embassy of the Republic of Bulgaria, for groups of Transition Year students.

The workshop will include a multimedia presentation on the Cyrillic alphabet and a demonstration of calligraphy. Students will also try their hand at writing in Cyrillic.

Places are limited, so early booking is advisable. Any TY teacher who would like to book a place is also welcome. The workshops will take place on Monday, November 27th, in the European Public Information Centre, Dawson Street, Dublin 2.

The European Public Information Centre will also host a parallel exhibition on the Cyrillic alphabet, organised by the embassy of Bulgaria. Workshop bookings: Deirdre Bourke at 01-6341141 or deirdre.bourke@ ec.europa.eu.