Reflections

Hello! This is my last post, which means it's time for reflections!

3 'What I learned' takeaways from my placement

1. School never prepares you enough

No matter how many press releases I may have written during Public Relations (Media) class, it all didn't seem to help when I had to write one during my placement.

There are so many things which school does not teach and cannot teach. For reasons such as the obvious difference in how different media organisations work, school does not teach you when is the best time to call up BBC or who you should send that RSVP to in Wall Street. There were just so many things in which I felt so useless about being during my placement.

2. But there are lots of things you can prepare yourself for

For example, you can start by familiarising yourself with the names of local journalists covering the beat in which is relevant to your job. For example, revising what you learned in school about press releases.

For example, prepping yourself for a total change in environment.

For every point that school cannot teach, I find that there's another thing that school had taught me but which I did not put it to heart before. When I finally realise that I had learned something in school before but had forgotten about it, it makes a stronger impression on me and I'm really glad to have that experience. However, there are also those incidents when you realise belatedly that you have made a mistake on something which you have learned before.

3. Change your attitude

This is probably why I think a change in attitude is the most important and useful preparation any intern can have.

This is a learning experience, but this is also the real world. Be prepared to start from the bottom, do every other administrative work that no one wants to do. Watch what other people do, learn from it, then ask for chances to try your hands on it.

While I may have had prior work experience in an office, this was vastly different from what I had experienced before. I suffered an identity crisis mid-way through my placement, unsure of my responsibilities and purpose in that office. It felt like I wasn't doing public relations work, because it was so different from what we do in school. 

To be honest, I started my placement with unwavering enthusiasm, but there's barely any of this left now. While I had a positive attitude towards my work, I clearly wasn't prepared for the wide gap between school and agency work. Whatever enthusiasm I had for my work slowly turned into panic, uncertainty and worry. 

I started dreading work.

Then somewhere along the way, I got used to the environment and everything seemed to start getting better. I got more "real work" and the days didn't seem to feel so horrible any more. At least, I stopped dreading going to work.

Undeniably though, this was a valuable learning curve, one that I'm glad happened during my internship placement rather than when I take on my first job. 

As a result, there are so many things which I wished I had a different result. Admittedly, there were tasks in which I felt I did not do my best in. They could have gone much better if I had done them with a different attitude.

3 Things I wished went better

1. Socialising

I never knew that I am so bad at socialising. Disclaimer: I have no qualms with talking to strangers. But somehow, talking to strangers in a natural, "normal" environment is different from talking to strangers during a networking event. 

Confession: I am horribly awkward at socialising events. The most common statement I say during events is: "Hi I'm Magdalene, but I'm really sorry, I don't have a name card for you."

I cringe even at the thought of how awkward I was every time I said this.

2. Media liaison

I sometimes wonder if it shows in my emails and phone calls that I'm a rookie at media liaison work, because I am just so awkward at this.

Halfway through a phone call with a media while doing a media audit, I find that I've ran out of things to say. I can never seem to get the right words or phrases immediately while on the phone and I always seem to regret my first choice of word used. It did get slightly better at a later stage, but now that I think about it, I was really very bad at it when I first started.

3. Proactiveness

I admit, I should have been more proactive. It could have changed the result of everything. Like I mentioned earlier, halfway through the placement, I started dreading work. That was probably when my enthusiasm for it waned and my desire to take the initiative in many things dropped drastically.

I avoided taking up new tasks for a period of time, contented with whatever existing regular tasks I had. The end result is that I barely had exposure beyond working in the office and there were many tasks in which I never got the chance to try. 

Nonetheless, all of these were valuable experiences to me. Many of the mistakes I've made during my placement, I'm glad I made them at this stage as an intern, because I've had really forgiving managers who understood that I was still in the process of learning the ropes of this industry. 

Had it not been for this module, I probably would have gone for my first job without any real experience on public relations, so in many ways, this module was to me, an important milestone in my life.

At the very least, it has motivated me to excel in this career path that I've chosen for myself.

With lots of love and best regards for everyone graduating this semester,

Magdalene

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Curtin Singapore