Mastery Journal: Public Relations
It is amazing and a little bit scary to realize that I am two courses away from achieving my Masters’ Degree in New Media Journalism, but the reality is, it is literally right around the corner. These cliché sayings come to mind: “a stone’s toss away”, “in a blink of an eye”, “right around the corner”. And it is all completely true! These last four weeks in my Public Relations and Reputation Management class was just another milestone or an etch in a wall counting down to the final hurrah. And this course proved to be just as challenging as the earlier courses in this program! If not more due to the fact that it was a little different from my other courses as it was not exactly focused on journalism, but as the title of the class states, public relations and reputation management. I can honestly say that the assignments given were different from what I was used to and what I expected from the course. The differences in this course is a gift and not a curse because it gave me another perspective, that of the public relations world since it is pretty much entwined with the journalism world. The assignments were not focused on writing but on promoting, which is a valuable asset that we need to have as we venture out into the real world. For me, I found this side useful because I do want to promote my brand (whatever it ends up being!) and this class was a step in the right direction. Although the topics provided in the assignments definitely did not fall under my interests, it helped me realize different types of writing are out there and that journalism does not fall under one “tab”. One thing that I really enjoyed doing in this class was a Public Service Announcement (PSA) video. PSAs are something I have never done, but being aware of what the purpose was for it, I was able to tie in some of my interests to make a short PSA. In the beginning, I felt overwhelmed. Mainly because it was unfamiliar. At the end of my assignment, I found myself thinking, “Wow, that was actually pretty fun!” I feel it is a lesson of how we need to be open to new things and not fear them but to embrace them. Like I learned with this assignment, don’t be afraid of going with the unfamiliar. You may just end up finding your niche!
