Category: Musings
Dear PR Majors
Dear public relations majors,
I would like to offer up a few words of advice in regards the fast-paced, stressful, wonderful, insane industry we have grown to love in between all of the chaos.
First, I wanted to share the best advice I have ever been given. Sophomore year I was in the middle of a visual campaign when every possible thing seemed to be going wrong, and my professor told me, “Make it work.” Profound huh? Well in public relations there is a 110 percent chance that things will not go according to plan, no matter how well you plan. A client will change their mind about what they want months into a campaign, a venue will cancel the week before a big event, or just when all is seeming to go well – a crisis will come forth. That is the beauty of PR though, we are the chosen few who make things better. So when it feels like nothing is going right and you are drowning in chaos – be resourceful, take things one step at a time, think outside of the box, ask for help – and you will make it work.
Secondly, I know that we all live and die by our Erin Condrens (or Emily Leys or Lilly Pulitzers or insert favorite planner here) but do not let take away from truly living. There have been far too many times I have missed out on really enjoying myself because I didn’t pencil it in. I love the fact that I am obsessively organized, punctual and time efficient, but it has also been my fatal flaw in truly living my life. So let’s stop glorifying busy and write in a little wiggle room so we can start enjoying things a little more.
My next word of advice is stop letting competition discourage you and start making it inspire you. Public relations majors are notoriously competitive, always fighting for the next big internship, leadership position or opportunity – and that constant clawing to be at the top of the totem pole can be utterly exhausting and disheartening. Stop thinking about your peers’ resumes and just focus on being the best at what you do. As I have said before, I would rather have friends in high places. Let’s all make a collective decision to stop with the underhanded brags and competition and just encourage one another.
Lastly, explore. PR is so multifaceted, between media relations, event planning, crisis communications, integrated marketing and the other million sides of the industry – it can be easy to feel lost. It is okay to not have a staunch answer when people ask what you want your focus to be, but what is not okay is if you are not exploring to find what that answer is. Finding your calling is a journey and 4 years is usually not long enough to make that destination. So calm down, take a deep breath, and explore away.
Best,
Natalie Adams
Lessons From a Fourth Year
Wake up Early… EVERYDAY
Stop complaining that there are not enough hours in the day when you are sleeping through the two or three most important! I have learned that knocking out the hardest tasks of the day before noon makes for a much better day.
Take B12
This stuff is literally a miracle. A B12 and a cup of coffee will make even the busiest day seem conquerable.
Save Naps for Rainy Sundays
I cannot say that I believe those Buzzfeed posts about nappers being more successful. Successful people know what they need to do and they get it done, without sleeping in between.
Only Wing it if You’re Good at It
Vague, I know, but winging-it is a true art. There are people who can get away with a client pitch with no research, but most of us are not Don Draper so I have learned that it’s better to be overprepared than sorry.
Download a text editor
I use Grammarly. It makes emails to professors and research papers a lot less of a threat.
Stop Giving People Your High School Email Account
Sorry naticus93, you are now demoted to retail store notifications.
Networking is not Just for Seniors
Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT wait until senior year to start networking. Build strong, professional relationships, go to events, reach out and ask questions – it will make job searching a lot less stressful when you finally roll around to it.
Ignore FOMO
On any given night you will have around 6,000 options to participate in, and sometimes you’re not going to do a single one of them, or sometimes you simply can’t. It is okay. There will always be more, and you will have a lot more misery thinking about the things you didn’t go to than the actual missing out on them.
Competition should inspire you, not threaten you
Why do we get so upset when other people find success? There is room for all of us to be successful, and frankly, I would rather have friends in high places down the road.
It is okay to not know exactly what it is that you love yet
It took me three majors and a lot of soul searching – to still not even know what my calling is yet. But I am closer and I have tried out a lot of things and I have gotten pretty good at some of them, so I’m learning to enjoy the ride.
Actually do things that scare you
Whether that is applying to an internship that is coveted or going on a study abroad all alone in a place you know nothing about – you will almost never regret it.
Make Decisions for YOU
I spent far too much time making my life decisions for other people, and for a while that meant living a life that was not my own. Sure you need to reach out for advice and wisdom, but make decisions for you. As I have reminded my Gamma Chi girls upwards of one million times, “YOU have to live the life that you make, not the people you are letting make it for you.”
Great People
Suspended in a Sunbeam
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” -Carl Sagan
Feeling small is an incredible blessing.
Recently I had the overwhelming joy of experiencing this on one of the largest scales imaginable with a short trip to the Grand Canyon. It was on this too-short voyage that I was humbled in a way that I don’t think I have ever experienced before.
So much of our society is pounding us relentlessly to be obscenely large in our self obsession, to occupy time and space in the biggest ways imaginable. That identity is found in grandeur of oneself.
But standing in the Grand Canyon, looking over the entirety of earth’s history, you learn just the opposite. Identity is found when you feel incredibly small. Identity is found in the humility that we are just an infinitely minute part of the universe. Identify is found when you put it all in perspective.
This is not to be mistaken for insignificance. Just the opposite. This identity is found when you recognize that you were created as part of the infinitely long, magically complex human story for a very specific reason.
Like strokes in a Monet. We are not meant to be large, we are not meant to be enough all on our own. We are meant to be intertwined, blended, saturated, and morphed. We are not meant to be seen as a stroke, we are meant to be viewed as a work of art. We are meant to be seen from a step back, meant to be seen from a place of perspective. The beauty of our kind is we we have a boundlessly talented artist putting each of us exactly where we are supposed to be. An artist whose masterpiece can only work when all of us realize our destiny.
A destiny to be small, yes, but more than that a destiny to be part of a masterpiece.
Sitting on the Fence
“He has sat on the fence so long that iron has entered his soul”
Remember that time when you couldn’t really wear clothes from the children’s department anymore, but the junior’s department was still a little too mature? The time when you floated around in this gray, gap tween purgatory, lacking a grander identity.
That’s where I am at right now, only instead of not being able to find an outfit for the middle school dance, I can’t find the next move I am supposed to make in this journey we call young adulthood.
I realized the reason I am unable to move forward is because I am quite literally sitting on the fence in almost everything that I do. I have got one foot at my childhood home in North Carolina, and one in my new home in Athens. I have one foot in law school applications and one filling out applications for a career in PR. I have one foot telling me to grow up and take on the responsibility and one telling me to stay a kid as long as I can. I am perched so high upon the fence, that my humpty dumpty moment is approaching inevitably.
I am sitting on the fence, because I thought from up here I could get a good look at my different landscapes, and hopefully be able to make the right decision. That’s not how it works though. When you perch yourself up on a fence, you get just a distant, skewed perspective on what is around you. To get a real view, you have got to dive right in and take everything in from experience.
That is what I have got to do. Just pick a side. Dive in. Experience. Learn. Grow. Learn some more.
Honestly, anything has got to be better than sitting in the middle. So that is my vow, stop teetering on the fence of indecisiveness and lunge off onto a side. What’s the worst that can happen? So I don’t like a side, I can just climb back over and try out something else.
10 Promises to Senior Year
This morning I stood manning the Relay for Life booth at the UGA orientation activities fair, scanning the sea of the school’s freshest new faces and wondering how on earth it has already been 3 years since that was me.
In the cliché blink of an eye I have somehow gone from wide eyed freshman to terrified senior.
And with the final year of my carefree youth approaching at a horrifying speed, I have decided to make myself some promises to get the most out of my senior year.
1. Start Saving More Money
Seems fairly straightforward, but it is something I have managed to do fairly little of (I mean, working for free really leaves a lot of money leftover for saving, right?), but in a year I am going have rent and a call phone bill and you know, other adult things, so I am promising to live beneath my means and put some away for a rainy day (overpriced Atlanta apartment).
2. Stop Making Decisions with Everyone Else in Mind
Selfish right? Well I have decided that I am going to stop taking everyone else’s opinion when deciding what to do with my own life. Not that I am not appreciative of insight, I just refuse to live a life that is a culmination of what other people want for me. The biggest thing I have learned in college? Life is way too short to live someone else’s life for any part of it.
3. Stop Eating like I am Still a Freshman
Yep. No more large pizzas just because it is a Tuesday night and they are $5. Taco Bell is not a place that should be making up a (significant) part of my diet anymore. This year I promise to learn to love the salad and embrace cooking at home.
4. Go with the Flow
I vow to stop being so obsessive over things that I cannot change/things I really do not even need to worry about. Deep Breaths.
5. Get Really Good at Something New
I am thinking running or brewing beer. Maybe both.
6. Make More Time for Friends
Internships and clubs and volunteering are great don’t get me wrong, but your people are what really count once we have to leave this place. I promise to take a few more nights off working and make some more memories with the people that matter most.
7. Plan a Bomb Post Grad Trip
I am going to need a buffer before hitting the swing of full-blown adulting.
8. Do Something More to Help Others
Remember not to get too caught up in the hustle and bustle to stop remembering that serving is what we are all called to do.
9. Do More for Myself
Selfish promise numero dos. But really, I promise to take a little time each day to do something for myself.
10. Get to Know a Professor Better
Something I have tried to do more lately, but getting on the good side of a professor is not a privilege to take lightly. I can use all the recommendations I can get.
Child’s Pose
Lately I have been thinking a lot about how my newly entered “adult” life never seems to let up, just throwing one challenge after another – leaving me anxious and on edge. So last week I tried to find a few moments in my relentless schedule to take a chance to do some yoga. I went through the series of Bikram poses growing tired and sore from the exercise that I had strayed one for too long, and was relieved when I eventually settled into child’s pose.
As a sat there lying on the ground with my arms outstretched and my body sinking into the floor I thought about how satisfying sitting there in that moment was. Sitting there in child’s pose is where I came to the realization that that very moment represented the approach I needed to be taking in my hectic life. Child’s pose is not particularly special on its own, if you were to rest in the pose right now there would be nothing stand out or spectacularly relaxing about the moment. But after a rigorous hour of challenging poses and pushing your limits, Child’s pose offers a moment of refuge and peace that awards you for the hour of hard work.
That is life I realized. Finding complete and utter peace in the smallest moments, knowing that those moments are only satisfying because of all the hard work that lead up to them. Life is no longer about waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel, its about enjoying the tiny beacons of light along the way and knowing that you are chugging always forward to the next destination. A cup of coffee on the walk to class. Lunch with a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. A manicure. These are the child’s poses that I have been overlooking lately. The precious moments of reprieve amidst the insanity of this crazy, wonderful, scary, life. These moments may be fleeting, but remember that they are only powerful because of all of the hard work that preceded them.
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Khalil Gibran
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