Saying Goodbye to My Curator Internship
My time at Curator has come to an end, but before I go, I want to share what I have learned during my 10 weeks as a PR intern. Here are my top 5 takeaways from: Curator’s Internship Program:
1) Know that you are valuable. One of the things I loved about being part of the Curator team is that I was pulled in on many different projects, which gave me the opportunity to learn a wide range of skills that will be extremely useful for my future career. Every time I assisted with a project, I would get great, constructive feedback. The team would always let me know that the work I was doing was helpful to them and the projects they were completing.
2) Nothing is minor. Before my internship at Curator, I don’t think I grasped just how large of a role public relations plays in our world; I only understood part of it. In PR, everything is related. Something that may seem very minor or unimportant is actually part of a bigger project and so it is of value. For example, a media list is how PR specialists get in contact with the appropriate journalists, media outlets and social media influencers who will then report on an agency’s many clients. While media list creation can be a tedious task, the reporters and influencers I select make an impact on whether or not we garner coverage for the client.
3) Be a strategic thinker. In PR, you need to understand how different markets are evolving because you want to make sure your clients get the best coverage in a timely fashion. With the evolution of social media and the Internet, figuring out which platforms are best for specific messages and brands is becoming more complex. As a PR specialist, you have to be not only creative, but also strategic in order to provide meaningful coverage for your clients.
4) Pay attention to details. As an intern, you may think paying attention to details isn’t very important because someone is always checking your work. However, internships are meant to prepare you for your career so you should always put your best foot forward. I’m not saying that my work at Curator was perfect, but I would take the team’s feedback seriously and update my projects to the best of my ability. You want to try to detect a mistake by yourself or go back to your work and fix things without someone telling you to do it first.
5) Manage your time well. One of the main things to understand as an intern is how to manage your time. You may be given multiple projects on a given day and you have to be able to assess what is most pressing and needs to be done first and what can wait until other projects are done. This ensures you meet deadlines, but also have the opportunity to work on more projects.
Overall I really enjoyed my time at Curator because I felt like I was part of the team. I had previous internships before, but I felt I learned the most from my time here. The team is smaller than what I had experienced before and I believe that the close-knit environment really helped me get a better understanding of what PR is and what PR specialists do on a day-to-day basis.
Now that this experience is over and graduation is near, I am ready to start a career in communications and hopefully PR. I am very interested in a career in the sports industry, but I am up for anything that comes my way. As an international student, the pressure to find a job is very much on, but I’m hopeful I’ll get to stay in Seattle and, most importantly, the United States.