Real World PR!

I would definitely say that my experience last Friday at Real World PR was very beneficial. I had a really great time, but felt like I really learned a lot at the same time. 

The day started early when we all met over at Lauren's at 5:15. We piled into her car and headed to the conference center in Atlanta. Two short hours later we arrived to Real World. I really did not know what to expect, but I was pretty excited to get the day started. 

We began with breakfast and a question and answer session with three experts from CNN. It was awesome to see these three people who were extremely knowledgeable on the subject of social media and the evolving state of media in general. It was really neat to see these people so well educated on the things we learn about everyday in class. 

Next we moved into our first session. I picked a session on internships since I am currently in the process of looking for one. It was great to hear from people actually doing the interviews on the things that they find important. They gave some really helpful advice on interviews, resumes, portfolios and networking. I felt like they were very open and honest and really wanted to help us find an internship that was beneficial to us. 

The next session was on Non-Profit PR. Non-Profit PR is something I am considering so it was good to hear the pros and cons of the field. One of the women worked for Cox Communication, one for a children's museum and one for YMCA. All of these are very different branches of Non-Profit so we got to hear a lot of diverse information. 

I found the session after lunch to most beneficial for me personally. We got to sit down with a PR professional one on one and they helped to critique our resume. The lady that helped me actually was the CEO of a small PR firm and she really helped me change some things around on my resume. She told me the things I needed to focus on and some other things that could be left off. After we went over the resumes she just gave me a little advice about networking and applying to internships in general. I really enjoyed the little bit of time I got to spend with her. 

Finally I went to a session on event planning. I was really excited to go to this session because event planning is something I am definitely interested in right now. All three event coordinators stressed the importance of staying organized at all times and paying very close attention to all the details. I loved hearing them talk about their budgets of thousands of dollars that they have to work with for events. It was cool to see the similarities that their job has with what we do in class planning the Mass Comm mixer and the athletic auction. 

I would say the main thing that I took away from real World was to NETWORK. Every person I talked to emphasized the importance of making connections with others. When the day began I was not so sure about talking to strangers, but as the day progressed I slowly became much more conformable. I hope to soon be a pro networker!