How PRSSA Has Impacted My Student Career
The PRSSA chapter at Anderson University rebooted in 2017 after a few years absent. It was restarted my junior year at AU, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t taken full advantage of the opportunities or it hasn’t impacted my life as a student. PRSSA has helped me become a better networker, learn more about the PR industry, develop my leadership skills and secure my dream internship.
The PRSSA has helped me a lot in the past year and a half. Before PRSSA I hated networking and had no clue how to do it, but because of events like Half Day with a Pro, I’ve started to learn how to become confident. Since then I’ve become confident enough to reach out to PR professionals and get coffee with them. Doing this has helped me gain a better insight into the PR industry and prepare me for the impending job search.
PRSSA is also helping me learn more about the PR industry. I am currently in the process of studying for the PR certificate. This certificate is a review of all that I have learned these last four years and is helping me tie it all together so that I feel prepared and confident in my knowledge of public relations.
The biggest way PRSSA has helped me as a student has been helping me obtain my current internship at BLASTmedia. Every month our chapter invites a PR professional from the Indianapolis area to come speak on a current topic in the industry. One month BLASTmedia Vice President, Anna Julow Roolf, came to speak. Afterwards, I was speaking with my advisor about my search for a spring internship. It was at that point that Anna mentioned they were looking for a marketing/sales intern for the spring and handed me her business card. Next thing I knew I had interviewed and received a call that they were offering me the position.
PRSSA has helped me so much in the second half of my college career providing me opportunities I would not have been able to get without it. As I am talking to younger PR students or students interested in becoming a PR major, my biggest piece of advice and encouragement is to get involved with PRSSA. To attend as many PRSSA and PRSA events as you can, to make as many connections with PRSA members as you can because while knowledge of the PR world is important without the connections and the real world experiences you get through PRSSA, finding and transitioning into a job will be much harder.
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Hannah Scott is a senior public relations and political science double major at Anderson University from Goshen, Indiana. Scott is vice president of Anderson’s PRSSA chapter and the senior account manager for Fifth Street Communications, AU’s pr agency. Scott is also a member of the student ambassador team in Anderson’s admissions office.