Nothing Pretty: The reality of the past 10 weeks

Today marks my final day at Event & Conference Co. Over the past ten weeks I have written press releases, multiple blog posts, conducted extensive amounts of market research and spreadsheets, completed data entry and ventured out into Perth’s foodie hot spots to handout fliers, all in all, a lot of work.

Bridget has always told her PR students that the public relations profession is not glamorous. I finally understood what she was talking about. Whilst I was working at an events company, the behind the scenes work was often tedious, bland and repetitive, far from fun and creative. I assume that if I was interning as a graphic designer, my tasks could have been more creative, however the PR work I undertook was predominately research based. Whilst I was prepared for this, the amount of research and areas of research did take me by surprise.

Most weeks at my internship consisted of the same types of tasks, however in the final week of my placement, I was able to help in the setting up of a conference my company was organising for one of their clients. Unfortunately as this was a corporate event, there were no pretty flowers, glamorous table displays or aesthetic decors that I could photograph and attach to this post. I was hoping there would be :( I'm sorry!

My duties for this event involved setting out the identification tags of the entire guest list in alphabetical order. In order to do this, I had to arrive at the venue, which was Frasers Restaurant in Kings Park at 6am. Once this task was finished, I helped with odd jobs around the venue until our 7am de-brief. My final task at this event was to greet the entering guests with a fellow intern and assist them with finding their nametags, then instructing them to the seat list. I was not able to help out for the entire day, nevertheless leaving the office and experiencing part of what goes on at an event behind the scenes was valuable.

In a previous week I was also given another chance to leave the office by distributing fliers around Perth’s most popular café strips. Along with two other interns, we visited cafes and asked if we were able to leave fliers for the upcoming gourmet food expo with them. To my surprise, everyone was accepting of the fliers and it was nice to think that we were actually helping contribute to this event being successful. The strips we visited included Subiaco, Leederville and Northbridge, so look out for the hot pink De-Lish fliers with Anna Polyviou on the front! You really can't miss them.

Whilst my placement has truthfully not been exciting, I am grateful for the opportunity at my placement and am definitely glad I chose the PR Internship unit. The last ten weeks have opened my eyes to what goes on in the real world and different workplace tasks. Being able to state that I have had this practical experience will no doubt be valuable when it comes to future job applications. I even think this process has helped build confidence within me, cementing the fact that I am capable of work life after university. I am proud of how far i have come and how i have managed to deal with the commitment of this internship.