First day at my PR internship

My experience of commuting downtown was not difficult, but shows how ridiculous it is to do five days a week and could not imagine doing it for my entire career. It took 2 hours to get from my house to the PR firm. I was on the train for about 1 hour and 25 minutes. Then I had to walk a total of 10 blocks and take the L, which totaled another 35 to 40 minutes on to my trip. Then repeat at the end of the work day. Plus, public transportation is expensive. It almost seems cheaper to drive.

Once I was at the PR firm, I realized it was quite small, which means I will get a lot of hands on experience. Unfortunately the computer system would not let me log in so I really didn't get a feel of how they are set up on computer network, but I think I got the gist. We had a company meeting first thing and was let in on what the current standings are with each client. They seem to have a large work load for such a small firm. To me, that is great. Their main function seems to be getting media contacts to place information about their clients in their medium, track their clients media placements, and part take in some event planning. With an advertising background this is all new and different, but I will get to learn a whole new aspect of the business communication field.

The company was very nice to me. One of the workers took me out to lunch at Corner Bakery and we just chatted and got acquainted. It was very pleasant. She also showed me the bank that I will probably have to visit a few times over my internship. Right after lunch, I had a web seminar on the program cision point. It is a media contact database and it is a pretty nifty tool. It has a quicksearch and powersearch function, which allows you to retrieve contact information for all types of media.

Following that I worked on a book of article clippings for a client. I also updated the client contact sheet and did some basic office work. Then it was already 5 pm. The day flew by, which I kind had a feeling it would. But with all the excitement of the first day, I left the package I was suppose to have delivered on the 14th floor as I was leaving. It was going to the front desk for the USPS pickup... Oops! I was so full of information I forgot the simplest task. Oh well, if that is the worst thing I can do, then I think this internship will be okay. Round two tomorrow.