Keeping Good Company

After a rather shocking previous week at the old internship, I had a rather lovely surprise follow it up!

My supervisor invited me along to the West Australian offices to present a thank you cake and certificate of gratification to the CHIEF OF STAFF AND SENIOR EDITOR OF THE PAPER (coooooooooooooooollllllllllll). The West were sponsors of our campaign that just wrapped up, the Five Cents for Five Senses effort, that was very successful this year.

Walking into the offices is exciting enough for a little third world child like me, but meeting the editor and the cheif of staff was exhilirating. Only to find they are completely normal, friendly, down to earth gentlemen who need no fuss made about them!

As I have blogged before, PR students tend to have a vision of the journalist as an A-Classs untouchable celebrity who unlocks the doors to public relation and media relation success. Thus, in my mind I may have pictured the two gentlemen as the Kanye West and Jay Z of West Australian news. Needless to say they were normal as can be, but I still felt special meeting them.

Going to the newspaper and meeting the journalists who print our stories and make our companies newsworthy makes all this experience real. We are not in the class room, and this is not a draught for an assignment. There is no Turnitin to check our work for us and it is not just our tutors who will evaulate our efforts. Everything we do now is authentic and real work that is building the foundation of our careers. It too me visiting the West and meeting these wonderful and successful people for me to realise this.

I am very grateful, at this point, for this experience and everything that I have learnt and I don't want it to end!