Morning All,
Now I know we all leave our assignments to the last minute, do our pre readings for class 2 minutes before the tutor walks in and rarely submitt assignments before that 5pm mark, but I knew I'd have to 'lift my game' when it came to my placement at Perth Zoo.
So for the first few weeks at the zoo, I hurried through all tasks given - basically throwing it at my supervisor every time I was done so she didnt think I was an incompetent no-nothing student who should really be making the coffees than doing what ever task was just given to me. I started to love the praise I received for being so efficient that it made me work even faster!
However, the tasks I recieved when I started at the zoo were much more basic then the tasks I finished my placement with. So while this fast pace I was working at worked at the beginning, I struggled to keep up at the end. Once I started receiving harder work, it was harder to finish in the 5 minutes I had become used to. I found myself screaming 'Sorry!!!' the second I actually did finish the task. It was then that one of my supervisors, Ingrid, sat me down and explained to me "quailty over quantity". She said it sometimes took her a whole day to complete one task but she knew when she had completed it she had done the very best she could.
Although this should be fairly obvious advice, I am sure we are all bending over backwards trying to impress everyone at our placement.
Lesson Learnt today? My new way of impressing everyone at my placement is with quality, well checked work, rather than a dozen half hearted, unspell-checked documents :o) an obvious lesson I know!
2 comments:
Good afternoon Ali,
I have to say I can’t agree with you more –punctuality and organisation are highly regarded in our industry and being able to manage and prioritise tasks is something that we all tend to let slip with our uni work.
I felt the same as you when I first began and no matter how tempted I was to check who had been updating their facebook status I wanted to impress my new colleagues and show them I was competent and willing to complete and learn anything they gave me.
I am glad to be working on bigger projects and tasks too that do require more time and consideration and being trusted with them is humbling.
Thanks for putting a great blog out there!
Hello Ali,
That's a wonderful post :) It's pretty good piece of advice that your supervisor has given you. In the professional world we can't afford making grammatical mistakes and unspell-checked documents. Quality is a must and i believe we have all been repeatedly told this during our lectures.
But the thing is that in the fast-paced PR industry, there are many occasions where we are not allowed the precious 24 hour day to complete a task. At times we have to meet several deadlines on the same day. This is where the time management skills we were taught during lectures become handy.
I believe if we have good planning, we can produce good piece of work and also on time. Though i have never done any time management regarding assignments, i had to do so during my internship to manage the bulk of work that i had to complete. It's amazing how ordered and efficient you become not only as an employee but also as an individual. Now, even for my little tasks at home, i do some time management and believe it or not guys, life becomes so easy and yeah i don't forget things easily anymore. That's because now i note and plan them ;)
Thanks for the post Ali. Great one.
Cheers
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