An exit strategy.

KEEPING YOUR CHIN UP

Hi everyone, this is my fourth blog post about my journey with Perth Fashion Festival (PFF). It has been a tumultuous journey filled with highs but mostly lows. As future graduates about to embark on a new journey, we have spent a good set of years behind us being prepped and trained. But what do we do when we're almost at the end, and we are not quite ready to go past the finish line? My internship term at PFF has been over for a while now as the last few weeks have been spent reflecting on what I have learnt, what could have been done better and eventually what's next. This internship has made me question so many things about myself. I have evaluated my strengths and weaknesses and have been looking into further developing my set skills. I have been told many times that this was all part of a learning curve. Surely enough it was and PFF has given me plenty to carry on with. I have also met many inspiring people along the way within the industry and worked with peers who are also there to gain invaluable work experience. 

I am looking forward to feedback with regards to handling work pressure and how you would handle an internship which revolves around your discipline but it still being outside your comfort zone. Being a PR and Journalism student for instance, has let me work on overcoming the challenges of the very complex area of Marketing. But as I have mentioned in my previous posts leading up to this, disciplines like marketing, Public Relations and the likes are very much linked with one another. They surely cannot exist in a vacuum. I started contacting past tutors and reading up on more marketing related issues to help me understand how my department works. I was determined to learn and make the most out of this fantastic opportunity. 

Along my journey, I have heard countless amount of feedback from my peers doing their internships. I think it is important to take triumphs and downfalls in good stride and not let either define you. With the tasks handed to me under the sponsorship and business development department of PFF, I was constantly trying to find ways to learn and keep up. Unfortunately, I let the pressure get the best of me. I was constantly making tiny glitches that I would never make under normal circumstances. My advice to fellow future graduates out there is to never let others or your work define you. There are many paths we can pursue to eventually reach our goals. But at this point, I need to be out of my comfort zone and gain some experience in uncharted waters. Take the road less traveled and come out wiser.

Here are some tips that I found useful when facing struggles at my internship:

http://internships.about.com/od/internshiptip1/a/I-Am-In-A-Bad-Internship-Now-What.htm

Until the next post, this is Dhiva.

Keep your chins up and skin tough.

Dhivashini. T (Dhiva)
16106648 
Curtin, Bentley 

Tick! Tack! Tick! Tack! ....

Hello everyone,

As you can easily guess from the title, the main topic for today’s blog is ‘Time’. When entering the real world of PR, I quickly realised that Time is a very valuable yet always scarce resource.

During the course of our studies we were often given the opportunity to work on “real-life” clients and provide “real” solutions. However, a very important aspect was missing: Time constraints (It’s true that we did have deadlines for our assessments but these are trivial compared to real-life deadlines).

As an intern, my main issue was to adapt and take in these new skills and understanding of the PR world while at the same time try to keep up with this rapid and demanding world.

Our daily workload has its specific, often short, deadlines which require a quick and almost instinctive decision process. And that is why I believe that work experience plays a crucial role in the PR field - and any other field - ; experienced PR practitioners will have an intuitive feel when working and will automatically know what the task/situation requires.

Interns first have to go through a series of internal mental processes to understand the context and its requirements so as to be able to provide their own inputs. On the other hand, experienced PR practitioners will, through practice/repetition, skip some of these processes and are thus able to put more emphasis on their inputs.

Unfortunately for organisations, it means that most interns are at the learning stage and that the real inputs that they could bring to an organisation only come with time and experience - which alas often comes by the time their internship is over.

So that’s the main thought that I wanted to share today.

Until next time, best of luck for those still doing their internships!!!