From books to reality

Hello Everyone, I hope you all are enjoying your internships!

I am doing my internship through the Government State Internship Program, and I must say I really enjoy it! 

I must admit I have been one of those feeling a bit terrified about this placement. How to find my internship, how would I perform being there and if I actually was ready for this?

- Already?

I mean, time has passed so quickly and I can’t believe I am actually in my last semester, doing my PR placement, which has always felt so far, far away!

I have loved my PR units and done pretty well, but there is always that insecurity; what about when it’s real? Real media releases, real people and real challenges?

- Well, it is not that bad at all!

My first day at the Foundation began with touring around the place, introductions, and an extreme amount of information! The Foundation is a non-for-profit fundraising arm of the State Library functioning to “add value” beyond the core business of the library. They run a number of interesting projects and campaigns to engage community and raise funds, and this is where I come in. Who would have thought a library does so much extra, that most of have no idea about at all?

They are only two staff at the Foundation, and they therefore need heaps of help with everything. They tell me all the time “We’re sorry to throw you directly into everything”,- but I love it, that’s the way to learn! I think it is great to have some responsibility, and I am sure that they allow me to do a wider array of tasks than bigger organizations with large PR departments would have been able to.

Furthermore, they are very flexible with what I do, and allow me to start with those tasks I want to gain experience in! My main tasks until now has been everything from creating a communication strategy for one of their current campaigns, writing media releases and fact sheets, promotional letters, web-page content, e-newsletters and social media strategies! Next week I will be helping to prepare and run a big event, so it certainly are a lot of different tasks!

There is hard to pick one experience to talk about, but one day we had a social media and PR consultant in and I was working with him all day. I learnt so much from him! I found it specifically interesting how different his views as a PR person were from those of the rest of the staff at the foundation. What he wanted me to write and communicate was so different to what they wanted me to get out there, and with that I realized how different mindsets we have. When writing I have been trying to focus on what I’ve learnt in my courses, but I’ve experienced that people without “PR minds”(if you can put it that way) don’t necessarily think this is correct. The PR expert was all about short sentences, catchy phrases and straight to the point material, whilst the current material they had was more lengthy, fancy and full of information! We went through all current material together and we changed a lot! However, in the end of the day when this was proofread by my supervisor we ended up to change a lot back again… I guess this only shows how different we are and how important it is to communicate inwards and agree on what to get out there and how to do it!

On the other hand, the most interesting impression I am having after my first days with work experience is how easy it is to believe that “real life” is so hard and ruthless all the time, where as I actually find real life so much more flexible. Of course, everything must be perfect and polished, but there is no exact marking guide to follow. Surely, there are rules and grids, but I must say it all is so much more exciting when you know your media release might actually get media coverage – and not just a mark!

Oh, this is getting lengthy so I’ll end here now, and will come back with some more reflections soon. Hope you all are enjoying your placements!