Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Final Month and So Much To Do..


Dear readers,

I’m entering in my third and final month at Apave and to speak true, I have not noticed time-passing by.

Those two last months have been so overloaded with work that time seemed to speed up and to speak true it was an amazing experience.

I’m not saying it was boring and that I was overloaded, au contraire, having so much work really gets into you and as an intern, you’re so proud when something goes right that you want this feeling to continue and get involved totally in your work.

1st experience:

My major tasks as communication intern were mainly to contact the Press and keep in touch with them. What is interesting with this is that you really get the grasp of how it is to work with journalists when you actually work with them.

There is always that need to keep contact, to recall and specially to have regular phone calls with them. Whilst doing this, I realised that:

WOW

I was already beginning my first media contact lists and I understood that those relationships would or at least should last for the entire time that I’ll be in the public relations field.

It was quite interesting as an experience, keeping in touch with them is rather time-consuming but when you get the chance to have that sweet girl at the end of the phone who is really willing to help, you do not even think of it as time-consuming but as a well done task.

2nd Experience:

When I began my studies, I thought that working in the public relations field would be mainly focused on the media relations but I came to realise during my internship that every single petite aspect that touched a company’s image and reputation was to be taken into account. From the designing of the invitation card to the articles and adverts posted in the Press.

Every tiny detail was to be considered crucial and budgeting really was a necessary pain to be considered at some point.

It all started when time had come to focus on all the conference day material. The Graphic Designer and I had to start working on all the official documents that were to be distributed to all participants, prior to the event and during the conference’s day.

Invitations were to be finalised and official documents of the conference day had to be confirmed before the end of September.

I thought that a month of work on this would be enough, but I soon realised that time went by too fast and that procedures took long.

We had to ask for quotations regarding the prices and the products proposed, we had to concentrate on a quality-pricing focus and we had a lot of amendments to do regarding the final documents.

Dozens of quotations later, I realised that to fulfil a task and especially when it was to be done budget-wise, you needed to make compromises and to choose the best out of a global quotation. One could order invitation cards with a company and the envelopes printing with another one. This was normal usage in a corporate world and companies had to deal with that.

Well I hoped that you enjoyed all of my posts and that it really helped you to get an insight of what my life was as an intern.

 

 

4 comments:

M K said...

Your internship seems very interesting. You get to learn about editorial stuff too! That's amazing. So much knowledge you can bring forward to your real job later on. Reading your post gives me a slight insight to what you have experienced. Good job.

Unknown said...

Wow. Your internship definitely seemed way more interesting compared to mine at Naim's. Though mine wasn't that bad. "self-assuring" It's just that the office that i was interning in wasn't as big and eventful compared others and yours especially. Even so, I'm grateful that each and everyone of us were given the opportunity to experience firsthand the PR industry and its work-related activities. I totally feel you when it comes to event planning, documentation and the never-ending list that you'll have to contact and manage. Luckily for us we were taught how to do all that in our pr classes in Curtin. Anyway, all the best in your future career. Wish me luck too. : )

M K said...

Being in Naim HQ in Kuching is way more hectic that Miri. I prefer the miri office. A little laid back and easier to handle things. :) Best of luck Phebe! And thank you! :D

Anonymous said...

Hey guys, thanks for commenting..

And yup my internship was really interesting.. I worked on so many aspects of an event planning that I now feel confident enough to be in charge of any event.. (that might be a bit exxagerated but yoi know what I mean.. :)

M K, the editorial stuff was probably, for me, amonsgt the most interesting things in the internship.. Getting a real insight of how it is to work on the visual aspect of communication really makes you understand all the drawbacks and difficulties that will eventually come across my professional path in some times.

Phebe: I do feel grateful as well when thinking about this work experience, it really gives you that little touch of reality that we lack so much when going to class.

Good luck to both of you for your future careers and thanks againg for commenting.