Week Five - Virtual Internship

SO, Here I am researching Twitter for people/hastags/businesses dealing with MakeUp and Beauty, when Twitter decides to shut down! So dependent on this amazing networking site, I was stuck on how to continue! Unfamiliar with the MakeUp and Beauty field, I'm totally lost on how to get the bulk of my research done, other than placing MakeUp and Beauty in a search engine and hope I get lucky!

Luckily, this is one of the many reasons, I wanted Needed to do an internship, so I could get questions and problems like these answered and solved!

This week's assignment was to create a vision board for the next three years of my life. The key to this assignment is to make it as detailed as possible, after all it's the plan for YOUR life. My board begins with the fall of my senior year (pause. Insert Mini Senior Year Celebration Here! Axe 'Em Jacks!).

The board specifies what my GPA will be at the end of the semester, as well as, jobs and organizations I plan to participate in during the Fall semester. During this time, I designated what days I will dedicate to my client and what exactly would be done during those days.

The board continues with Christmas break and the beginning of my job search. Perfect time to introduce myself to companies, and make them aware of my graduation status in May. Another break the board goes into detail with is Spring Break. My goal, even before the vision board was constructed, was to have a job offer the week after Spring Break. Farfetched? Not at all! A few of my classmates were in class at the BEGINNING of the Spring semesters with job offers, so believing that all things are possible, I will be sitting in class mid March with employers knowing my name, graduation status, and capability of getting the job done!

I am familiar with many of the websites to find communication jobs, particularly in the Dallas/Houston area of Texas, such as,  Hoojobs, PRSA, HigheredJobs, and Indeed to name a few. Along with these websites I listed apartments in the surrounding area at a reasonable amount. There's nothing like finding the perfect job, them wanting you to start ASAP, and you don't have a clue of where you're going to stay.

On the vision board, I also discuss the future of Creatively Dream, my Freelancing PR company, as well as, the future interactions with capDIVAting ARTistry.

Overall, the vision board was a great idea! As soon as I finish adding all the details to the PowerPoint, I'll put it on an actual board for visual display to keep my "eye on the prize."

I have to admit, I had seriously doubts about making a career out of the public relations field, but with the guidance of this internship, I feel confident in my future!

Side note:
I will definitely be interacting in the #InternPro Chat Next Monday at 9pm. This weeks topic: Parents: Friend or Foe in Your Job Search! It's sure to be an interesting discussion!
Can't wait to blog about this discussion!

-Creatively Dream 

Week Four - Virtual Internship!

Week Four!? Wow time flies...

I participated in the weekly #internpro chat this past Monday discussing the topic of, "Balance Your Internship and Your Summer Vacation!” I am so fortunate to tune in this week on this topic, because like many of the other chat participants juggling school/work/internships, I'm burnt out!

Attempting to balance out working 8-5, scheduling events for christian youth group, The TURNAROUND, putting together a writing staff for HerCampus SFA Branch, and the internship, I'm just as busy or busier than I was during school!

The very first question of this chat was how do you prevent from getting burned out. The responses were good, but two that stuck out to me most were to designate a day to calm down and recollect. Since Sunday is "the day of rest" anyway, I requested that our Sunday evenings meetings with CasMacPR be moved to Monday and the rest of the "duties" I tend to can be picked up Monday as well. This gives me a day to do Nothing. Of course, I'm never known to do anything, but the idea is that I don't have a specific deadline to get something done that day. The other thing that stood out was to dedicate an hour of your day to concentrate on you. After I get off at 5, I go home to send out more emails and research more topics from the time I get in til the time I pass out. Reserving an hour out of my day will help me to recollect my thoughts as well as help get rid of this "Freshman (Junior) 15" I picked up on my first year of school away from home!! ;)

The chat continued with tips of how to manage time properly and how to reach out to others. Most importantly, a quote from Tom Bolt, HR professional, @TomBolt stuck out to me most:

"Make time for fun during summer, but you should be making life priorities. What is important right now?"

What is important right now? Many of my classmates come back home from the summer and want to "make memories" consistently saying it's our last year of school we should do something. I don't agree with the statement, college years are the best years of your life. True, I can get away with "spur of the moment" actions while in school and do things "professionals" aren't suppose to do, but at the same time I don't think these years are going to be the "peak" of my life. I honestly think my sister is living The Life. She graduated from East Texas Baptist University last spring, found a teaching job, moved out, and is on her own. I don't think you can get any better than living your life without having the NEED to depend on someone. This takes me back to the original thought, what is important right now? In order to get to The Life I need to work hard, just as she did, to get to where I want to go. Of course, we're in two different fields and it's a totally different process when branching out in the Communications/PR field, but the concept is the same. Do what you have to do, to do what you want to do. Of course, I'm not going to spend my summer working working working, but my priorities are with school, internship and networking and everything else comes after.

This past week, press kits were discussed with CasMacPR. I am familiar with the press kit process thanks to Raven Robinson and PR2Politics. My only problem with this task was that I really didn't know anything about my client. I knew what the public knew about her as far as what's on the website and social sites, but I've yet to set up a meeting with the client. That's one of the downsides to virtual internships. Because this is not a 9-5 office internship, it is harder to schedule Skype calls and appointments to meet up with people. The process is very flexible, and very ideal for those who are just doing this one virtual internship, but for others who have multiple commitments it may get a little frustrating and tiring to adjust to at times.

All and all, this is a learning experience, not only about the field of PR, but my future and my priority list in life. :)


-Creatively Dream

Virtual Internship - Week Three

The PR Field and virtual internships go hand and hand. With the internship being virtual, the time to place conference calls and Skype meetings are unpredictable. Anything could happen with either party to where the meetings can get behind schedule or can not happen at all, but I believe it's up to the intern to make it work.

The scheduling difficulty makes the intern decide if this is truly what they want to do, not only with working with the company, but with joining the public relation field period. When dealing with clients, they should know you'll be available to them 24/7. Whether it may be the client going through a crisis, or a magazine calling to set up an interview with a client, you must be ready. In the internship case, the intern must be flexible toward working with the company. I am fortunate enough to have a summer job from 8 to 5, making most of my evenings free to do my internship duties. I couldn't image trying to work a retail job not knowing what I was working from week to week and having to deal with scheduling time for the internship, but again that's the same with the PR field as well.

With that being said, I am debating whether or not I'm totally committed to this field. Of course I love it now, especially after going over more crisis scenarios with Cassie of CasMacPR (my internship), but this is speaking in my status right now: I'm a single, senior in college with no children or responsibility other than myself. Ideally, in my opinion, this profession is not "family friendly." I can't picture myself being deep into the PR field and planning a wedding or having a child. This is a ways from now (Lord willing on the baby part), but at the same time this is something to think about.

This week we went over crisis management, and I felt as if I was better prepared for the scenarios this time. The first week learning with crisis management was a bit much, unsure of what to do in certain cases. With the tools Cassie has taught me, I feel that I am better prepared to deal with the situations that may occur.

I also participated in a few Twitter chats as well through my "professional PR Twitter account" @CreativeDream_ . Creatively Dream (Twitter wouldnt let me add the -ly to my user name) is inspired by my best friend in high school. We had dreams of going to New York, her to pursue a career in Broadway, and I to pursue a career as a magazine editor. BIG Dreams! lol We would constantly write out plans of how to get to NY, what we would do when we got there, how we were going to make it, but most importantly we always wrote "Dream Big" at the end of the plans we were making. I am a creative person and love to express myself, and with the PR field I believe thats an important asset to bring to the table. The two together "Creatively Dream." I am currently working on a website which would be geared toward the PR field as well as (my second love) Event Planning.

I would like to make Creatively Dream my own company one day, but for now it's my personal project.




I'm Skyping with one of my clients for the summer, capDIVAting ARTistry, and quite excited to see her expectations of what she would like for me to do with her craft in the make-up artist industry. 


Until next time! 


-CreativelyDream