Pod sweet pod

First days of school suck, especially if you don't know anyone in your class.

The first few days are always awkward; where do I sit? Who looks nice enough to talk to me? Did that person just give me a weird look? I knew I shouldn't have worn these psychedelic coloured pants.

I knew there would be some sort of group related work for this program, so I was nervous about starting over and making new friends. So, I figured I would just listen to Tim's lectures, do my work and go home.

However, to my surprise, I did connect with three particular ladies that make coming to school a little less annoying and a lot more fun.

I quickly realized that the three ladies, Sam, Sadie and Luisa, were in the same boat as me. None of us knew anyone or had any experience in the public relations field. Soon enough, small awkward "how are you today" moved to inside jokes about topics we had created throughout the first semester of school.

Embarking on a new experience like this program is both scary and exciting. Scary because I don't know what I'm really getting myself into, but exciting because I'm making real friends (and yes, learning valuable knowledge!) that I can see myself hanging out with long after we graduate. So, the moral of this story is that no matter how scared you may be about new things, always accept them with open arms. We cannot move forward in out lives if we don't take the first step. Try it for yourself, you will learn something new about yourself, and meet some cool people along the way!

 

Sadie, myself & Sam (at our weekly 4 hour design class!)

myself, Luisa, Sadie & Sam making our finest professional faces!

Why did the shy girl pick PR?

So I’m over halfway through my first semester as a PR student, it’s weird to think that this time next year I could be potentially working in the field doing real client work, writing pieces that the media could rely on…scary, yet exciting.

Many people who know me are usually surprised when I tell them I’m in public relations. I was never the most talkative person in school, however, I think the first time I was really into the idea of public relations was in my first year social research class when we were learning about ethnography.

Ethnography is the study of social interactions, behaviours and perceptions that occur within groups and communities. The goal of an ethnography study is to provide rich, holistic insights into people’s view and actions. As an ethnographer, your main objective is to document the culture, the perspectives and practices, of people in a specific setting (Source).

This qualitative research method has been adopted from its roots in Anthropology to now being used in market research to analyze how a specific audience spends their time in their daily lives.  But how does this fit into public relations? Well, I feel this skill is necessary to understand your audience, which is a huge part of any solid RACE/Communication plan.  Being able to communicate a message to a specific audience will be achieved more greatly when you actually understand the audience you are dealing with.

So hopefully I don't come across as too much as a stalker, but I truly find people interesting in how they communicate and act with other groups of people. I challenge you to try to conduct your own: start with something small like how people interact on a bus, or waiting at the bank. You'll be surprised that after a while you start to see same patterns in how people act to one another. Of course the results cannot be generalized to replicate the attitudes of a large populationn, but it's still has beneficial results when looking at specified groups.

 

 

 This video explains how ethnography is used heavily in market research (and some drawbacks). Interesting points and really shows a new insight on how important perspective is.

 

Welcome to my blog!

My name is Amanda; I’m a 22 year-old public relations student at Mohawk College. I graduated from McMaster University last year with a degree in Communications and I’m extremely eager to start my very own blog!

A little bit about me to get things rolling here: I'm currently in my final (let's hope) year of school and I am so excited to start working in the field of public relations. My work experience stinks of a customer service junkie; I worked at a grocery store for 6 years, a summer of marketing for a window cleaning company, and am currently an office assistant at a hair salon and a field representative for a marketing firm called Infield marketing.Yes, I've had my share of horrible customers but the great customers make up for it.

This is my first attempt on “blogging” (minus my humorous attempts on Twitter) so bear with me here! My goal with this blogging assignment is to *attempt* to organize my thoughts about my education, family,friends, food, music and everything that makes me, me. This intro is just establishing what I wish to accomplish, I guess you could say my CommunicationsPlan…okay enough with my PR dialogue here.

I think the best way to introduce myself to the blogging world is through a good old mission statement. I would say we are all our ownorganizations—we are our own spokesperson for ourselves so why not have a mission statement? It would be helpful to read everyone’s own mission statement to be able to relate to new people. Sounds okay? I’m going to try to give it ago now.

My mission statement: To use my communication skills to connect with people—either people who share the same interests as me, or people who are just interested in learning something new. We are all walking spokespersons of our own brand and a blog is a great channel to get our personalities out into the virtual world.

So hopefully I can get my own brand across with this blog,and meet some interesting people along the way. Keep reading, I’ll post something tasty next J