On work experience, boats and fish
By Shannon Hards, a second year student at Plymouth Marjon University’s Journalism degree course
After planning and researching blog posts all week, I’m finding it really difficult to put fingers on keys and do some personal blogging. I first got in contact with DCA after Account Director Mary O’Leary came and spoke to my course mates and me at Plymouth Marjon University. Module deadlines and no car meant I had to wait till their move to Plymouth before I could leech some of their expertise.
I’m finally here, at the end of my week, and although it may have been quiet, it certainly wasn’t uninteresting.
Do you know that you don’t need an International Certificate of Competence when sailing around the French coast, but that you do when sailing around French canals and rivers? Neither did I, until I began research for a blog post for Sutton Harbour Marina.
But learning as much as I could about boats in three days wasn’t my only challenge, oh no. I also learned a whole lot about fish.
It’s similar to going on Wikipedia and clicking on a random article that you’re so interested in you click on a related article. You do this eight more times and suddenly you’re reading about traditional pirate shanties.
It’s fascinating to learn about random things that, otherwise, you wouldn’t have had cause to look up. I feel like a job here would make you really good at Trivial Pursuit.
The amount of research that goes into these posts is incredible, something I didn’t appreciate until I started. I thought (rather naively) that these posts would have been written by people who have been sailing (or fishing) all their lives, not someone who spent a good 4 hours reading boating forums.
It’s also such a bigger job than I imagined, far bigger than the story spinning I had imagined it to be. DCA manage clients’ social media accounts, book photographers, create videos and campaigns, and arrange transport and accommodation for journalists on press trips.
This is only a fraction of what I’ve experienced here, and I’ve only been here five days!
Most of what I’ve done here has been writing and researching, which suits me down to the ground. At some point, third year permitting, I would like to come back and see some of the other sides of PR.
But that’s for another week.
It seems like a fascinating job, and, while I don’t know where this Journalism degree is headed, I will definitely not be ruling PR out of the mix.
Thank so much to DCA for having me this past week, for teaching me about PR and for so many wonderful biscuits.
Read Shannon’s blogs created for two of DCA’s clients here:
http://www.suttonharbourmarina.com/sailing-plymouth-france/
http://www.plymouthfisheries.co.uk/news/2018/7/26/whole-fish-or-filleted
