A Bittersweet Farewell

Beginning this placement, I saw it for what it was - working in a professional environment alongside my colleagues. But actually having to say goodbye to my supervisor and two intern buddies was more bittersweet than I could've imagined. 

Driving home that last Thursday, I was left with the strangest combination of emotions. Firstly sad that one of the most fun and positive experiences of my life had come to an end and I would never be able to recreate it again. But also elated because I had just finished what I considered to be an internship invaluable to my learning and had gained all these skills, and I had some of the best times with these people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. 

As mentioned in previous posts, my supervisor acts more as a mentor for her interns than an employer. This allowed a much more relaxed environment and positively impacted my learning immensely. It also allowed us the freedom to design our workday - especially our last day.

Having finished all of our assigned tasks, our last day of work consisted of me and my two intern buddies working from our supervisors home office and completing tasks for her health food business. This meant researching and writing, but also chopping up mangoes, styling smoothie bowls for photoshoots, counting and ordering stock. As well as fresh scones with homemade jam, and chicken wraps for lunch lovingly cooked by our supervisor herself - how many interns can say that??

To celebrate the end of our placement, we also finished up early and took the three border collies to the park and played with them, it was a perfect way to wrap things up. 

I wanted to take this opportunity to express how grateful I am for the style of internship I secured and how much it benefit my learning. The creative and easygoing environment we worked in meant I was excited to come to work and push myself harder than before. It also allowed me to make three great friends I would not have met otherwise. 

Thanks for reading! And I hope you enjoyed your placements as much as I did!

Bianca

Exceeding Expectations

We all went into our internships knowing what the overall aim was - being to develop our professional skills and prepare us for a career in the 'real world'. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that the experience has done more than improve our skills, but instead has improved our  overall confidence in a way that never would have been possible in-side a classroom.

Granted we do work in teams for assignments, and we know how to interpret a brief and work toward an end product or goal. But the variety of jobs we undertook and the initiative we had no choice but to develop and use showed us that, combined with the theoretical knowledge we gained during our studies, we are more capable than we thought. 

Jobs I had never done before, and as such had no plan to follow or experience to derive information from, forced me to think critically, research, analyse and formulate a working style that allowed me to get the job done. For example writing for someone other than myself was challenging,  but had I never done so before entering the workforce, I wouldn't have developed the skills or work ethic that are now so valuable to me.

Some days I would come into the workplace and my supervisor would have new jobs for me that hadn't been previously set out in my brief, forcing me to think on my feet and work effectively - previously a weakness of mine. 

Working on jobs outside my industry or typical job description also helped me feel confident taking on jobs I wasn't normally used to or comfortable with. E.g. researching/tracking down tech equipment for the business and photography.

And of course no internship would be complete without its fair share of 'crappy jobs' as my supervisor liked to call them - which included invoicing for two of her three businesses. 

Interning definitely exceeded my expectations and benefited me in more ways than I anticipated, how about you?

Thanks for reading!

Bianca

Stop and Listen

So, I’m currently nearing day 10, and I find myself thoroughly immersed in office life! At the moment I am responsible for the task of composing a detailed proposal document. This document outlines the suggested plans for the facility’s exhibition space. The proposed suggestions detail the goals, outcomes, and risks associated with each pragmatic idea. The document also contains an audience analysis, which details the importance of each goal and proposed idea in relation to the audience group and their importance to the facility, followed by realistic event proposals, their costs, benefits and risks for the organisation. It is then presented to the organisation’s managing director for review…

The completion of this proposal document proves to be a challenging task, as it requires the accelerative knowledge from areas of sales techniques, creative event proposals despite the space and resource constraints, stakeholder analysis, risk analysis and crisis management analysis. Given my lack of experience in the nature of events within the WA science community, proposing event ideas and the subsequent facility, versus audience outcomes proves to be a challenging task. Judging the appropriateness and feasibility of space suggestions proves to be a tricky task than one may originally think. Without the context to consider the successfulness or unsuccessful components of past events, and adjust ideas accordingly, making realistic suggestions is challenging. It has become quite apparent to me that we graduate with the ability to communicate, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we know what we need to be communicating. Working within the computational sector has shown me that we, as communicators by trade, have to be adaptable.

From what I have read from other blog posts, it is not uncommon to observe that one of the perks of working within a small department is that my internship experience is particularly hands on. I feel a deep sense of privilege that my experience is shaping up to legitimately prepare me for full-time PR work, and that my supervisors have the level of faith in me to trust that I have the capabilities to construct this document. I suppose after three years of study, it shouldn’t come as that much of a shock to me that I possess the capable skills set. They value my opinions and my perspective, despite my inexperience within the communications industry, let alone the science sector.

If interning has taught me anything, it is that those within the communications industry need to have a broad range of communications skills, outside of PR and marketing. We need to know how to communicate, but more than that, we also need to know how to stop and listen. Communicating comes easily to us. We wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. But understanding what you’re really writing about, now that takes some skill.

PR is Not Just About Writing

Greetings everyone,

From the beginning of my internship, I was never been given a chance to write a news release and honestly I felt a bit depressed and worried at the same time as I have not enough work sample for my report. Until this one fine day before my contract ends, Nokia Malaysia consultant, Gan Kel Sern asked for help from one of us, the interns, as he need to upload photos of Nokia Lumia 920 phone on Nokia Malaysia Facebook page. So, I offered myself to take photos for him as I have passion in photography and plus I need to add up my portfolio. I was assigned to take photos with the following themes:

• Nokia as most personal smartphone
• Valentine's Day

He didn't provide me with DLSR camera and the only camera he offered was Nokia Lumia 920 phone. I was skeptical with the quality at first but I just give it a try to see if its turn out as phone reviewers said about the phone's camera quality. So, I took photos of the phone and I was amazed with the photo quality. After taking few shots of the photos, I passed the phone back to Kel Sern and he chose two best photos to be uploaded. 

The next day, I saw the photos I took were on Nokia Malaysia Facebook page and I was so happy. The links of the photos are below:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=563284517017593&set=pb.113065628706153.-2207520000.1370542244.&type=3&theater

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=563802590299119&set=pb.113065628706153.-2207520000.1370542244.&type=3&theater

Photo is one of the medium in communications. I believe if you have more skills to offer other than writing and ability to speak properly, your value as a PR person is higher. I'm glad my skill in photo taking is applicable during my internship and after that day, they known me as an intern who can take a good photo. I'm glad to get positive feedback from FHKL about my skill. I feel appreciated.

Remember, never give up. 

Best regards,

Fazar Ria Muneera Bt. Safree Zainudin

13761196/ 7D5B3504

Semester 1, 2013

Curtin University Sarawak Campus