To Infinity and Beyond…..... Or Rather Forward Towards Our Dreams

So all things have to come to an end, the same goes for our internship. Finishing the internship is somewhat a joyous and sad thing for me. On one hand, yay, done my internship next is do the report, finalize it and hand it up this coming Friday 5th of June. The other, boo, as the internship have taught me so much and it ending so quickly feel so unnatural. 

But then, if the internship goes on without an end, that's no good for any of us. Why I say so, it's cause if we continue our internship with no end in sight, then how do we spread our wings and fly towards our dreams in PR-land. Okay, back to topic, internship is a good thing but forever being in internship is not such a good thing as we will always be an intern and not a full time PR Practitioner. So, it has to come to a point where it ends and begin anew in the form of Career. 

Thus, I solemnly bow my virtual head, thank you PR Internship for preparing me on the road to my career in PR. The fun and hardships along the way will be remembered and assimilated for the future. I say thank you to all my PR lecturers and friends out here for all the good things and "bad" things as lessons learnt. I am grateful that this course has internship as a compulsory unit and it has left a good mark on me. I will always treasure the moment I had with my internship and the course of this journey. 

That shall be all from me, signing off with one last:

THANK YOU !

With Regards,

Vincent Teo Rui-Ming

A relaxing end to a busy internship

Hi everyone!

Here is my (overdue) blog post about the last quarter of my internship at the Department of Sport and Recreation (DSR).

My final few days were really relaxing compared to the rest of my internship. I finalised my assigned stories for The Chronicle publication (due to be published early October-can't wait!) and continued to do the media monitoring. After that, I was assigned to proofread the 2014 annual report before it got published and printed.

Proofreading the annual report took up the rest of my internship as there was hundreds of pages to go through and each division within the Department kept making changes to it, meaning that I had to go through it several times. Since each division wrote their own section, there were inconsistencies in terms of the spelling, language, acronyms, grammar etc. which I had to look out for and correct.

My last day of the internship was on the 12th September and it was really fun! I attended the Pie Lunch (which is where members from different divisions within the Department get together for lunch at the local restaurant every Friday) and we shared funny and inspirational stories over good food. When we got back to the office, my supervisor went through the DSR's communications policies with me to help prepare for the PR internship report. Afterwards, the communications team surprised me with a delicious cake for a goodbye afternoon tea.

I am really going to miss the communications team. I have done a few work experiences before but I have definitely learnt the most from this experience. 

(Goodbye DSR-Thank you for everything!)

Thank you so much for reading my blog posts over the past few months! I hope that you learnt something valuable from my posts.

I wish you guys all the very best for the future!

-Michelle

Being a PR Consultant: Would I?

My final two weeks at Clarity were both hectic and saddening; I truly couldn’t imagine leaving the team and clearly, they hadn’t thought about it either. In fact, no-one realised it was my last day so I left the office on a Friday as per normal, with no more fanfare then is typically exerted during the afternoon wind up.

How could this happen you may ask? Well after completing my required 20 days, I continued to come into Clarity as per normal on Thursday and Friday’s. Why? Mostly because I wanted to continue learning; but also because being annoying perfectionist that I am, the thought of leaving a number of projects unfinished really irked me. Ergo, I continued to intern until the very last week possible (last Friday) when I realised that my final week of university was soon here and with it the ugly deadline for about 80% of my potential pass marks across all 3 of my units.

Image Courtesy of  Clarity Communications.

Despite my farewell being a little anti-climactic, missing out on it didn’t particularly bother me; I'd already offered to come back and present a short review of my internship to the  Clarity team, so I knew  I’d see them all again; and I’d also promised to making a special Swedish salad for the PR Team’s ‘Summer Salad Club’ so really, there was no way they’d avoid another visit.

Sitting in the City of Subiaco carpark across from office, I let everything I’d just learnt over the past three months settle in; I felt like I’d made genuine connections with these people, and learnt so much about PR, myself and the working world.  I came into Clarity not knowing if I’d be ready for that level of professionalism and work standard. I left not being that much more reassured, but definitely feeling a lot more confident that I’d be able to figure things out.

The other thing I left with was a job offer; with Clarity, in a yet to be establish role but under full-time conditions and commencing next year. I haven't discussed with my supervisor anything further regarding the offer, but I'm pretty sure I will accept it regardless. 

I truly can't thank all the teaching staff at Curtin enough for helping me become the PR practitioner that I am today. And I look forward to engaging with those in the future who will continue to aid my development. Best of luck to all my peers in their own journeys, I've thoroughly enjoyed reading these blogs and am confident you will all go far in the career path you choose.

Internship Golden Rule No. 4 – Give it your all; remain optimistic in times of stress; and never forget, that your next opportunity may be just around the corner.