Unlearn what you learn?!

Hello everyone!

Hope your internships are going-on fine and you are all having a wonderful experience or at least learning the most from it.

Well, as a start off, I’m Benoit de Lapeyre. I am in my last semester at the Charles Telfair Institute in Mauritius and I am currently in an internship at Imagine Communication. The company is a Media and Public Relations Communication Consultancy firm found in Port-Louis, the capital of the island. The company not only operates in Mauritius but also has clients in Madagascar, Reunion and other countries of the Indian Ocean. The firm deals primarily in media relations, intelligence and documentation, and event coordination, amongst other Public Relations services.

For more detailed information, you can consult the company’s website; 

http://www.imagine.mu/.

It has been almost a month since I started my internship and this whole month could be summed up by a phrase my director, Jean-Marie Richard, said on my first days as an intern;

“You are here to unlearn all that you were taught in school, only to learn again how things are really done”.

When I started my internship, having already experienced previous work environment (though not in the PR field), I did expect things to be different than what I was taught during my university years. However during my first weeks as an intern, I realised that the basic PR knowledge you receive during the course of your studies are simply guidelines, basic stepping stones. They only provide you with a global understand of the PR field. However when applied in the real life, PR becomes much more complex and extensive.

Since our first PR modules we were taught that PR should be a Two-way symmetrical model, but when applied in real life it means that we should understand and interact with the society in which we operate. It requires an understanding of society as a whole; its history, its traditions and its customs. Here in Mauritius, it is even more important taking into consideration our multi-cultural background. The insight I gained after this first month is that PR may be taught in theory but however its application in real life requires experience and on-the-job training to have concrete results.

I believe that we, as future PR practitioners, should have an open yet critical mind when dealing with our studies in the communication fields, even more for international students. As a Mauritian studying for an Australian university, I realised that my studies may provide me with an internationally recognised degree but ultimately as a PR practitioner I will only have the basic knowledge and understanding of PR. I will always require an adaptation and learning period in every context I intend to work in, even more taking into consideration our rapidly changing society.

I also wished to share a remarkable quote which portrays my thoughts;

“The curious thing is that with these exponential changes, so much of what we currently know is just getting to be wrong. So many of our assumptions are getting to be wrong. And so, as we move forward, not only is it going to be a question of learning it is also going to be a question of unlearning.” -- John Seely Brown.

The full article, which also provides a very interesting debate on Tacit and Explicit dimension of knowledge, can be read on the following link;

http://www.creatingthe21stcentury.org/JSB3-learning-to-unlearn.html.

I hope I gave you some interesting food for thought.

So until next time,

Good Luck to you all for your internships.