My PR Story Part2
WHY I stayed on my PR Career Path:
Spoiler Alert. It wasn’t the Internship in London
So, what happened next? Well, with my fancy, shiny, new college major, I packed my bags and headed to London. The semester cohort included 46 students. Our curriculum included a theatre class, a London history class and a British politics class. Also, all students were required to complete an internship…presumably in our major.
I miraculously landed an interview with a fancy public relations firm with offices in Grosvenor Gardens. The offices were in a beautiful building and in walking distance of the famous Victoria Station. I remember going to the interview and being wowed by the location, beautiful architecture and the nearby park. Somehow I got the job but I was so intimidated! It was my first internship and I was their first intern. Honestly, neither the firm nor myself knew what to do with each other. Internships weren’t common in London yet. We were even coached with what to say in our interviews about what an internship was because many employers hadn’t even heard of them before. My new office definitely didn’t know what to do with me. I had a desk that I sat at twice a week, 8 hours a day, and I was pretty much ignored. There were one or two ladies in the office who would occasionally say hello. The one man in the office never called me by my name, he just called me “the colonist.” We had exactly one conversation. He asked me about Texas and the Dallas Cowboys. He seemed a bit offended to find out that I had never been to Texas and I really didn’t like the Dallas Cowboys. He didn’t talk to me after that. I sat at a tiny desk behind a messy stack of years worth of newspaper clippings. With the vaguest of instructions, I figured out that they needed the newspaper clippings pasted onto paper and sorted into their different client portfolios. I spent all of my time pasting newspaper clippings. HOURS. I was lonely and miserable. Sometimes they would remember to ask me to join them for tea in the break room. “Oh hello colonist, you’re joining us for tea?!” They often went to lunch together. I never received an invitation. They weren’t nice. I counted the minutes until my lunch break and went to Victoria Station to eat alone and treat myself to Body Shop samples that cost 99 pence. (By the way, does Body Shop still make banana conditioner?) Internship days were the worst and definitely the times that I was the most homesick. Each day after work, I’d make the long (usually rainy and dark) commute home to my host family where I lived with my two best friends. I was never more happy to see two people than I was to see them after a day in that miserable office.
What had I done? Clearly, I did not want to be a public relations professional when I grew up. This was miserable. They were snotty and mean. I slogged my way through that stupid internship as best as I could. I focused on the rest of the amazing adventures I had during the semester. Somehow, I did walk away with a glowing recommendation letter at the end of it. I’m not sure how because the person that wrote it saw me exactly twice, once for my interview and once to hand me the letter.
At the end of the semester, I boarded the plane for home having just had the adventure of a lifetime. Despite the internship, I loved living in London. I decided though that as soon as I could, I would need to change my major. I was never going to do PR ever, ever again. I also knew that if I ever had an intern, I was going to do a better job than they had.
Not a great introduction to Public Relations was it? Why would I stick with this? Want to read Part 3?
