I can honestly say when I first started this internship I didn’t have a clue what PR was.

I still don’t. (Just joking, I swear!)

I’ve learnt so much over the summer and it’s been so different to what I expected (actual work, not just making tea – which, by the way, is something of an art form to Brits).

PR is a lot more complicated than I thought; it’s more than just writing a few press releases and networking with journalists. There are so many aspects to the job and I think that’s why it’s hard to give a simple definition of what PR is.

It’s definitely something you learn by doing, and working in an agency like this one, it’s very team-oriented work. This is both great and terrible (depending on your mood) because on the one hand you share the workload, but on the other you sometimes have to wait on other people to do their bit before you can finish yours. Which can be frustrating.

But if I’m honest (which I’ve been told repeatedly to be), this office is one of the most entertaining places to work, in the best way.

There’s a lot of team spirit, lots of banter – to put it mildly – and always something on the food table. Yes, there is a food table. Yes, I did steadily gain weight throughout my time here. Thanks a lot “cake week”. 

You can draw on (some of) the walls, and you don’t have to wear shoes. What more could you really ask for?

Despite all this, people here do work really hard. I hadn’t appreciated how challenging it is to manage so many clients at once, how hard it can be to come up with creative (and more or less realistic) campaign ideas, or even how much work goes into preparing a pitch.

As well as learning what PR actually is, learning how to pitch to prospective clients, brainstorming campaigns and doing social media audits, I’ve also been canoeing, I’ve been in tears from laughing so hard (this actually happens most days) and I now know what semiconductors and “dev kits” are (who would have thought?).

If there’s one thing these guys are great at (other than PR I suppose), it’s making someone new feel like a part of the team.

photo credit: Etwood