Week One: An exercise in building confidence

Hello Everyone,

My name is Daisy, and I am currently interning at Professional Public Relations, in their West Perth office. Luckily for me, I was quite organised and sorted out my internship 10 months ago! I knew a firm like PPR would be a little competitive, so thinking ahead was key to securing a place there!.

In the interest of being honest, I’ll let you know something- I started my first week feeling really depressed and unenthused. A combination of things really- I had been really busy organising PR in Fashion; I had been sick; I had lots of uni work to do before I started; I was doing work for another internship; and I was working a few days a week (which is sort of vital)- as well as helping out my Mum who isn’t well. All in all, I was pretty stressed, and a little tired, so the idea of having to manage all of that, plus FULL TIME work for a whole month- well I was a little terrified. Thankfully I’ve perked up and I’m grateful for such a great opportunity!

On my first day at PPR I was introduced to a few people, given a desk and a bit of a general induction.

I wasn’t given any work initially- as nobody had much on, but as the day progressed I was given a few tasks- researching Facebook pages for comments/discussions referencing a particular project. The aim was to have them on file to monitor, in the instance any negative discussion began to circulate (some of it had already begun). It was quite interesting, because it related to something we had done in-class and I felt like the background knowledge really helped me understand the context (obviously, for confidentiality reasons, I don’t want to discuss the exact details).

The week really picked up after there. I was given a whole month of social media posts to do for a client- the Submarine Institute of Australia. The Centenary of Submarines is approaching and subs are quite the news topic at the moment! However, with a limited topic- and keeping everything quite conservative- it was a little challenging to find content, so it was an excellent task. Thankfully, they were really happy with the work I did, and the consultant encouraged me to add more to the following month’s schedules when interesting content arose.  

I also put together some media clippings for one of their clients, the Northbridge Brewing Co. It was very beneficially seeing how the company presents their work to the client, once they have generated media coverage.

At PPR, they immediately told me that I wouldn’t necessarily just be given work, and that I would have to be actively looking for it. This is a bit of a two sided coin- it forces you to be confident enough to ask for work, but at the same time I worried that I was bothering people (everyone is very busy)! Therefore, my first week or so has definitely been an exercise in confidence building. For some reason, as soon as I’m in a work environment, I get very shy!

Does anyone else have this problem?

I hope your placements are all going well!

Daisy

Daisy Vogels

Curtin Bentley