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| Regular coffee spams |
Hi readers!
I’m Justine Lai, currently pursuing my
final semester as an undergraduate for BA in Marketing and Public Relations.
I finally ended my internship with Porter Novelli (PN) Singapore last
week and I must say that I felt really appeased, yet sad to leave. I learnt so
much during these three and a half months and every single day was fruitful.
Despite the OTs, heavy workload, and coffee spamming, I really enjoyed my time
working at the office. Everyone was really nice and generous with their
patience and understanding.
For my final blog post, I would like to reflect on my overall
experience and past mistakes made.
I remember making several mistakes during this internship, and one
of the most memorable ones was a phone call to a luxury magazine. A post-event
press release was disseminated to the media a week before and I was tasked to
call several journalists to follow-on the status. I was still inexperienced
speaking with the media at that time and I was really nervous. The first call
went alright, as it was short and the person made it clear that he wasn’t
interested. For the second call, the journalist I spoke to mentioned that she
only publishes exclusive pictures of events, and at a state of
white-headedness, I promised to send her a folder of it, without checking in
with my colleagues. When I ended the call, my colleague beside me looked
horrified and whispered, “We don’t have exclusive pictures, the ones we sent
out are the only ones we have. Why didn’t you clarify with us?” My heart
stopped and I wanted to cry. I ran towards my colleague, Navreet, who was handling
that account and told her what had happened. She looked surprised, but kept
calm and said, “Let me discuss this with Gabriel (another colleague on that
account.)” Scary thoughts ran through my mind, such as being fired, getting
scolded, causing a relationship breakoff with the magazine etc. However after
their careful discussion, they managed to come up with a solution, which is to get
client's agreement to send them other pictures that weren't used before. Then
they told me, "Don't worry, there are many other problems much worse than
this. This is nothing really."
I couldn't help but feel fortunate, as my colleagues were always generous
with their patience and encouragement regardless of my mistakes which I really
appreciate.
Another thing that I would like to reflect on is my attitude, as I
sometimes gets a little angsty during days with heavy workload, and I may have
appeared rude or impolite when my colleagues ask me to help out. Guess I wasn't
used to multitasking and I'll need to be more prepared for work pressure. Thus,
I included a phrase into my farewell email, "If
I had in any way messed up, please accept my apologies."
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| Occasional sweet treats from colleagues |
It's been a wonderful experience and I must say that everything was so worth
it. All the regular OT sessions, bringing-work home to do, were all worth it.
Guess I'll be missing my colleagues, conversations, gossips,
laughter and the random lunches as well as the occasional sweet treats from the
team.
Thank you for reading!
With love,
Justine Lai
15215640
Curtin Singapore
