Learn Fast or Go Home!

Take advantage of the opportunities given to you! I had the great experience to travel up to DADAA's (Disability in the Arts, Disadvantaged in the Arts, Australia) Midland office today where they have loads of talented artists working alongside DADAA's support staff. I was told to interview some of the artists to create an 'artist profile' to place on the website. Artists profile is generally a monthly occurrence but without resources and with time constraints it becomes harder. I wanted to take the opportunity to talk to the artists and find out a bit more of what DADAA is about and how they felt about DADAA. I definitely brought what I had learned from the Media Relations unit about interviewees and writing questions to interview the artists was easier.

What we haven't learned a lot of was interacting with other people and how you go about getting information of others. This becomes an even bigger struggle when you are working with people with disability. You have to be very careful what you say and how you phrase sentences. I found this not too difficult but we had a personal interacting learning experience that could have been beneficial. 

Another experience being chucked in the deep end was having to learn analytics. Once being introduced to Google analytics, I quickly had the sudden realisation that I really knew nothing about analytics and how they work to benefit the organisation. Although I hardly knew anything about analytics neither did my supervisor either. So we both sat down together and tried to learn about them. I remembered being told in PR Consultancy that we would probably need to know about analytics, I just never took the time to research and fully comprehend how it all worked. This was a huge stepping stone in my PR internship journey so far that realising that not-for-profits or small companies have communications managers that tend to do all the jobs involved in communications and more. 

Real life learning experiences are ones to take advantage of. Everyone in the internship program is lucky enough to have someone teaching them the basics of PR or they are finding out and learning for themselves. Internships are a great opportunity and should be may the most of. I have been very lucky to have a great supervisor who is teaching me what she does for DADAA on a daily basis and about PR in general. I am learning so much and bringing what I have learned from my time at university to help me and DADAA in my internship journey. I believe that everyone should take what opportunities they receive and build their experience to become great in a professional capacity.

Source: DADAA website >Careers page (Midland Office)