Making The Difference

Courtesy of pixabay.com

When we are about to graduate, we start to ask ourselves: what am I going to do from now on? As members of PRSSA, the answer to that question is public relations. But once we start college to become a professional, we realize that studying isn’t enough.

Even though authors, such as Wilcox, Bernays or Grunig, are a key to understand what public relations is, nothing will be more enriching than practicing the profession. Having the chance to participate in activities like volunteering, debates, lectures, visits to PR agencies, courses or any other kind of related activity, will lead you a step forward from those who just study the background.

The main reason is experience. Being a participant in those activities will give you qualities such as confidence, security and resolution capacity – thanks to the proximity you’ll have with the profession. Imagine being part of an event where you could see how the place is set, opinion leaders are selected, the schedule is organized and the press kit is prepared. This real situation absolutely tests what you have learned in school.

During college we learn a lot of tactics and strategies, steps to follow, different tools or methods but this profession isn’t so structured when it comes to practice. Public relations isn’t like math, where you have to always use the same equation to find the correct answer.

When we go out into the real world, we realize that we won’t use the same strategy or the same method for all the situations handle. In our case, depending on the target, the kind of corporation, the aspect we want to work with and plenty other factors, we are going to determine which of all the strategies, methods and tools we had learned are the most consistent.

According to Anton Chekhov, a memorable author from Russia, “Knowledge is of no value, unless you put it into practice.” So now it´s up to you: are you ready to prepare yourself to be one of the best PR pros or aren’t you?

Olivia Longobucco is a public relation student from Argentina. She is a member of the PRSSA Chapter at her college, Universidad Argentina de la Empresa (UADE). Currently she is in the second year of career but her interest in the profession is significant. She enjoys to participate  in activities related to PR. In her free time she likes going to the gym, reading books, taking walks with friends and spending time outdoors.

3 thoughts on “Making The Difference

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *