Research and Reflections

Hello There,

As I mentioned in my previous post about stakeholder relations, during the second half of my internship, I was assigned to a team that was in charge of coming up with an implementation report for aid and grants provided to small-scale miners and the rehabilitation of zonal mines offices in rural and urban Tanzania, on behalf of the Ministry of Energy and Minerals. This report was to be submitted to one of the Ministry's financial partners and required us to travel through 10 regions out of the country's 30 regions for over 20 days and so it was imperative that we do a good job at it.

Although it was not directly a Public Relations report, I thought I would share some commonalities I noted along the way. 

Our main task as we travelled through numerous districts and small towns was to interview the recipients of the aid and grants to see if they had used it as intended. I realized that this was a form of primary research in the form of interviews. When we completed our travels and started compiling the report we soon learnt that we would need additional information to substantiate and measure the information we collected through the interviews, which would be secondary research. Moreover, I realized that the research carried out for the report was similar to post campaign research as it was done to evaluate the pre-set objectives.

All this is to say that research is not only limited to when carrying out awareness campaigns but it is a tool that is imperative to almost every field of work and the knowledge we learnt in class will surely aid us in numerous scenarios to come.

Now that I am done with my internship, I feel incredibly fulfilled and I am grateful to everyone at the Ministry of Energy and Minerals for the giving me a chance and a platform to grow in my career. If I could go back to the beginning and advice myself, these would be my main tips:-

Be Optimistic: Thinking back to how nervous I was for the first couple of days, I would just tell my self and anyone planning on interning in the future not to beat themselves up too much. Of course you wont know everything in the beginning and that's okay because that's not what is expected of you. The best thing you can do is to go in with utmost enthusiasm and give your best to whatever task is handed to you. At the very least the people around you will notice how committed you are and this is a start to getting better.

Ask, Ask, Ask: Don't be afraid to ask questions. When you are not too sure about something go ahead and ask your supervisor and your workmates (*of course do this in discretion to their time and space). I found that when I knew exactly what was expected of me, my output was always so much better. Ask for their advice and opinions on your work as they have probably been in the industry longer and so can give great insights. Better still, ask what else you can assist them with outside of your designated tasks; you never know what skills you may acquire- a semi-professional photographer anyone?

Google is your friend: While recollecting her first internship experience in class, one of my lecturers told us that she Googled everything and I have to say I can relate. These days you can find a limitless amount of information about almost everything online, so why not make the most of it? I searched for everything from format samples to correct spellings, simply because as an intern trying to leave a mark in the world, you need to be on top your game.

As all this comes to an end, I would once more like to thank all my lectures and classmates throughout my years at Curtin as they have collectively helped me get to where I am now. Time shared with you I will cherish for the rest of my life.

I can't wait to see what life and the world of Public Relations has in store for me.

I hope you have reading enjoyed my posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them.

Latifah Mzee Hamis Salim Boma

17223946/ 7E3A1749

Curtin University, Sarawak Malaysia