Thrown Into The Deep End

Hi all!

I am halfway through my internship and have recently completed the two busiest weeks of my internship career!

My supervisor recently went on a three week holiday and left me in charge. After only a month of working at my internship I was suddenly thrown into the deep-end. No supervisor to check with, no one to answer my never-ending questions, just me, a little bit of training, and a lot of guess work!

To make matters a little more difficult, three events (book launches) had been scheduled during the time that my supervisor was on holidays. This experience gave me a new appreciation for all those looking to work in the events management field. I had never imagined how much running an event can involve, it seemed to be a never ending line of crises waiting to happen, never again will I underestimate the power of a master checklist!

In running these events I learned a number of things, the most interesting for me was having to create speech notes. Speech notes are something I haven't come across much in uni and so it was an entirely new experience when my supervisor asked me to prepare them for each of our key speakers. It was somewhat challenging trying to work the key messages of the company in to the speech notes, the other challenge was making sure our speakers actually stuck to the notes I created for them. This involved a lot of checking and double checking to ensure the speech they eventually came up with was appropriate and in line with the companies messages.

Having completed these three weeks of filling in as communications manager for my company I can definitely say I have had an invaluable experience. I have learnt so much from being thrown into the deep end, primarily the act of juggling a number of important projects at one time. From finding media coverage for the authors our company manages, to running three book launch events, to simply fielding the diverse range of public relations queries each day, this experience has added a page and a half to my resume. It also gave me confidence in myself as a public relations professional, it let me prove to myself that I really can make it in this industry.

Lastly, what I will take away from this is to never underestimate the power of practical experience.