Learning "Backwards:" Education Through Experience
In August of 2023, I began my first semester at GVSU as a junior with a Writing major and an Advertising and Public Relations minor.
In December of 2023, having only taken public relations courses in technology and research, I was offered an internship with The David Brand, a small PR firm based in Atlanta focusing primarily on the arts and entertainment industries.
Immediately upon acceptance, I was awarded with a five-month-long crash course in everything from research to pitch writing to resource coordination. This, of course, didn't include the challenge of juggling multiple internship projects alongside my academic responsibilities.
Now, roughly a year later, I’m able to look back and reflect on the different ways I learned through mistakes and through encouragement from my supervisor.
Skills I Learned:
Although I’ve learned a lot about advertising and public relations through my academic courses, my internship experience taught me skills that could only be learned outside of a classroom.
Research: Also recognized as the sometimes-dreaded “busy work,” I was tasked with a majority of the base-level research for our campaigns. I quickly learned how to use the platform Cision, a media contact research site. I was also immersed in the team’s Google Drive, where my mediocre spreadsheet skills became a primary contributor to our contact tracking and media lists. By the end, I was well-versed in creating contact lists for each of our primary clients and their campaigns, detailed specifically to fit the ideal audiences.
Event/People Coordination: For the final event I helped coordinate (an Earth Day Parade and celebration), I took responsibility for contacting all news sources for coverage. From researching who had it covered or similar topics before, to making cold calls, to following up with each source to get links to articles and photographs, I received a crash course in PR professionalism. This included everything from late-night emails to calling every news station at 6:00 a.m. the day of the event, truly giving me the beginning-to-end feeling of a small firm.
Mistakes I Made:
Not immediately making tracking sheets: I learned the hard way that backlogging is much harder than keeping track of contacts and stages of coverage as you go. A spreadsheet that organized information such as what outlet was contacted, who was contacted within that, and whether or not they responded and were willing to attend/cover the event became my best friend. It included all necessary information for our coverage sources, all the way down to a checkbox indicating that the content was posted or received.
Not checking hashtags: Since the accounts I worked with were mid-sized, hashtags became a very effective research tool for me. Looking at hashtags on news websites, blogs, and social media platforms became essential to finding outlets interested in the content/client I was pitching and seeking out the ideal journalist, blogger, or content creator within the organization.
What I Know Now:
Public Relations Hard Skills: A whole lot about press releases, media contact lists, the platform Cision, and sending out mass personalized emails, as well as a little bit about building coverage books post-events for client review and evaluation.
Imposter Syndrome: It’s all in your head. Walking into an internship where I acted as a full-blown junior account associate was terrifying, and it took me almost the whole five months to convince myself I was worthy of the job. During my interview, I explained my lack of immediate PR experience, and— to my surprise— still received the position. Still, I believe that my persistence in my initial contact with my employer, as well as my openness to criticism through the learning process, truly helped my odds as a candidate.
While learning through mistakes can be one of the most difficult ways to learn, it was the most rewarding for me. Having that experience and being able to relate it to class assignments surrounding building a campaign has helped me absorb the information so much better. In retrospect, I still think I might have been a little insane for applying, just as I thought I was then; still, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Sara Bagley is a senior studying Writing with a minor in Advertising and Public Relations. She currently works as an editor for GVSU’s Lanthorn and GVSU Housing as Lead Marketing Assistant. She is also serving as a Marketing Intern for The International Research Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF.) Sara is passionate about communication, writing, and anything to do with social dancing.