Final days, Trip to the River and Writing for Narelda

I can't believe I've finished my internship at Central. I feel like I have come a long way from when I first started at the end of 2013. My final few days as an intern has seen me do some of the most interesting and fun work I have done. Period.

Starting from the top, I was asked by Mike to take some photos and do a blog story for Central about the Sculpture Walk at Deep Point in Melville. The Sculpture Walk featured former Central student, with some even taking out prizes. I first though great, I get to do another story, but nothing to exciting. Little did I know I would be trusted enough to use a company car a drive down to Melville and take photos and thoroughly sort the story out for myself.

At first I was excited to be given that level of trust by Central and staff not only to do the story completely solo, but also use the company car. Then I felt a lot more anxious as I gave it more thought, what is my photo’s are no good? What if I crash the car? Of course none of what I feared actually happened. I sussed out the car and made it down to the sculpture walk and really enjoyed going around taking photos and formulating the story and the angle in my head.

The trust given to me by the Central staff really made me feel part of the team. The story itself was fun to write, but what meant the most was being accepted and trusted enough to be able to do the story solo and use a company car; certainly not what I expected at the beginning of my internship.

To read the story I wrote Sculpting Success, about the Melville Sculpture Walk please click the link.

The last major project I took part in as part of my internship was the Central Student Awards Night. This night involved all Central department awarding outstanding achievements in their various fields as well as overall student winners. This was a lot of work, like Left of Central but of a very different sort for me.

My task for the awards was to write the student award winners blurbs to be read out on the night. This involved writing individual paragraphs for each winner from a four page document on each. The task sounded easy but condensing all the information down into one paragraph that accurately describe their achievements was more difficult than I gave credit. I didn’t want to simply copy and paste a template filled with clichés and the same slightly re-phrased buzzwords. Eventually I got into a rhythm of writing these blogs and felt more comfortable doing them.

Lisa, supervisor for this task ended up being pleased with what I wrote got me to proof read and add in my part to the MC script for the awards night. I was shocked to get a task of this importance, but I gave it a try and soon got into the swing of it. At first I found changing my style of writing from blogs/ media releases to a speech for an awards night quite difficult. It had to be clear and succinct for the reader and interesting for the listener and was a completely different structure to what I had written before.

Learning that the MC for the Awards night was Channel 10 news presenter Narelda Jacobs gave me a real buzz. Simply knowing that something I had written was going to be read out by a house hold name like Narelda was a great feeling. Seeing it read out at the awards night a week and a half later was even better, especially since it all ran smoothly and my words were a success.

I am glad to report that my time at Central is not over. Kenley the head of the marketing team has offered me a position in the team on a part time basis to help them out and continue to give me experience. This is great news for me; I have had a great time with both the work and more importantly the people at Central. The opportunities they have given me and how welcoming they have been made at Central my time a real pleasure. I’m really excited to keep working with them.

Though this is the end of my internship it’s only the beginning of my time at Central and in PR. I have met great people, learnt new things and got a taste for what the PR industry holds. I can’t believe this is my final blog so from me, thank you Central, especially the marketing team and see you soon.

Writing with Mr Malkovic and whats 'Left of Central'

The three weeks of ‘Left of Central’ have been very busy for me and the Central marketing team. Since the Launch party there have been activities, music, food and events on almost everyday that need to be coordinated by the marketing team.

I have been spending a lot of my time at helping out Leanne the events coordinator, anyway I can with setting up, packing up and any job in between to try and make each day run as smoothly as possible. I have found this part of my work experience fun, rewarding and hard work. The best part of being involved in the events was physically seeing the work you do transform a space into something people really enjoy. Often I found at the end of a day I would watch people use the space or be entertained by an event and think I helped make that happen.

During the ‘Left of Central’ I was also I was given the title of ‘Night Supervisor’ which basically meant packing up the street each day or after each event was finished. Apart from the heavy lifting I really enjoyed this opportunity and the responsibility given to me. It gave me the opportunity to use leadership and organisational skills. I has head of a team of people who packed up the street each evening and I directed them as to what needed to be done and the best way to go about it. I think I did a good job managing this task because the pack up became more and more efficient throughout the three weeks developed a rapport with the people I worked with.

The only time my patience was tested was packing up after the movie night on a Friday. A group of drunks walked through where we were packing up and jumped on all the bean bags, ran off with one of our trolleys and were generally an all around nuisance. I was very irritated by this but soon came to realise this is probably part and parcel of working in events and tried to busy myself in other areas while the drunks got bored and left.

to see what Left of Central was all about click here

It was easy to forget that even though ‘Left of Central’ was on there were still other things for the marketing team to do. In the last week of ‘Left of Central’ the marketing team and I were invited to take part in a writing workshop with former 730 Report journalist Tony Malkovic. I was pretty intimidated going into the workshop; I didn't know what the expectations were for writing and feared I wasn't up to scratch. I was soon put at ease though because the workshop was very inclusive and ended up being probably the best learning experience for writing I have ever done. I was practical, concise and didn’t get caught up in the ‘rules’ of grammar or punctuation but rather focused on ensuring that Central has a consistent style and we communicate as concisely and effectively as possible. The two main things I took out of the workshop were to try and use an active voice and avoid using to many adjectives, instead find a good verb. Although this may sound dry and dull it has helped me to make my writing far more engaging and easy to understand.

It saddens me that there is so few days left of my internship. I have been learning so much about what goes into a PR role and how to improve my skills I fear I'll end up forgetting some of it. I think the challenge now will be deciding what I enjoy most and trying to focus on that one thing. At the moment though I don't have a favorite part but enjoy doing a little bit of everything, from event preparation to writing press releases and blog stories.

Until my next and final Blog

Steaf