Final lap

Regular coffee spams

Hi readers!

I’m Justine Lai, currently pursuing my final semester as an undergraduate for BA in Marketing and Public Relations.

I finally ended my internship with Porter Novelli (PN) Singapore last week and I must say that I felt really appeased, yet sad to leave. I learnt so much during these three and a half months and every single day was fruitful. Despite the OTs, heavy workload, and coffee spamming, I really enjoyed my time working at the office. Everyone was really nice and generous with their patience and understanding.

For my final blog post, I would like to reflect on my overall experience and past mistakes made.

I remember making several mistakes during this internship, and one of the most memorable ones was a phone call to a luxury magazine. A post-event press release was disseminated to the media a week before and I was tasked to call several journalists to follow-on the status. I was still inexperienced speaking with the media at that time and I was really nervous. The first call went alright, as it was short and the person made it clear that he wasn’t interested. For the second call, the journalist I spoke to mentioned that she only publishes exclusive pictures of events, and at a state of white-headedness, I promised to send her a folder of it, without checking in with my colleagues. When I ended the call, my colleague beside me looked horrified and whispered, “We don’t have exclusive pictures, the ones we sent out are the only ones we have. Why didn’t you clarify with us?” My heart stopped and I wanted to cry. I ran towards my colleague, Navreet, who was handling that account and told her what had happened. She looked surprised, but kept calm and said, “Let me discuss this with Gabriel (another colleague on that account.)” Scary thoughts ran through my mind, such as being fired, getting scolded, causing a relationship breakoff with the magazine etc. However after their careful discussion, they managed to come up with a solution, which is to get client's agreement to send them other pictures that weren't used before. Then they told me, "Don't worry, there are many other problems much worse than this. This is nothing really."

I couldn't help but feel fortunate, as my colleagues were always generous with their patience and encouragement regardless of my mistakes which I really appreciate.

Another thing that I would like to reflect on is my attitude, as I sometimes gets a little angsty during days with heavy workload, and I may have appeared rude or impolite when my colleagues ask me to help out. Guess I wasn't used to multitasking and I'll need to be more prepared for work pressure. Thus, I included a phrase into my farewell email, "If I had in any way messed up, please accept my apologies."

Occasional sweet treats from colleagues

 

It's been a wonderful experience  and I must say that everything was so worth it. All the regular OT sessions, bringing-work home to do, were all worth it.

Guess I'll be missing my colleagues, conversations, gossips, laughter and the random lunches as well as the occasional sweet treats from the team.

Thank you for reading!

With love,

Justine Lai

15215640

Curtin Singapore