“You should not expect much on the three first days of your internship!” They said….

I am doing an internship with 12 Monkeys in Mauritius, which is an advertising and brand communication company which opened in July 2011.   

I wanted to wait for my first week to end before writing my first post, but I did only two days and I have to admit that it was not like what ‘they said’, in fact, I never worked that much!!

On my first day, I was really stressed (I guess like everyone else involve in PR393). Of course I was early, but I did not plan to be sitting in front of the office door half an hour before it actually opened, (I wanted to give a good first impression).

I was quite surprised to see the office, a big room with desks disposed everywhere but no walls. I thought that this was great, I directly felt at ease, and no one acted like ‘the boss’. It is like one family working all together.

My day started quite slowly as I did not really know what to do and was quite shy to ask. Then I saw a woman with a pile of newspaper on her desk, and I thought (media clipping, that’s something I can do!) and there I started. However, I have to say that doing my studies in English did not help much as when I said ‘you are doing media clipping right?’ she looked at me and did not understand. (This is where I remember my OB classes: the communication model). In French the Media Clipping is called ‘Dossier de Presse’ which is something I should have known as even though our official language in Mauritius is supposed to be English, nearly every Medias publish in French.

Once the Media clipping done, my supervisor called me as to see what exactly I can do for her, and she asked me if I know how to do an (the French technic word) ‘OURS’. I panicked and did not know what to say; I am sure you all can relate to that moment where it is your first day and your supervisor asks you about something you never heard before. But I had to tell the truth, and then when she started to explain what it was, I had to maintain my laugh as I figured out it is the update of the media list. I felt quite stupid.

I was later asked to write a press release on an event, I spent about one hour on it and showed it to my supervisor who said “it is good. But this was only a test. Can you write a media release on the event of Sunday?” I felt betrayed and proud at the same time.

For my second day, I was feeling much better; I was there on time, started to be more confident and did some research on the French words for PR Techniques. I carried on writing the release for the event, it took me some time but it was finally approved.  After lunch, half of the team (designers) was creating a newsletter and asked for my help as to correct the text. They were also working on the bibs for the sport event, and I helped them on these too.

Once the bib and newsletter finalized, I had to call a list of journalists as to confirm if they were coming on Sunday. I do not know if it is only with me, but journalists are worse than celebrities! They are very difficult to reach. With one specific journalist, I am sure that I had about four different receptionists on the phone asking me to call on another number and guess what? I never reached the journalist…

So basically, I did only two days of internship and I feel like I have been working for weeks! However, I deeply think that it is an amazing experience and that I am lucky to work that much, I think it is the best way to learn and I am happy that ‘what they said’ was not true!