The End!....Or is it?

We (my PR campaigns group and I) have finally reached the end of our PR journey here as undergraduate students at the University of Georgia. As I have mentioned in my profile, we are all students under Dr. Karen Russell's PR Campaigns class and have been working all semester on a campaign for a client. Dr. Russell can tell you more about her experience with us in her personal blog. I must say that it has been a pleasure working under her and I have gained so much insight into the PR world from her class. I actually started this blog as an assignment for this class.

Marking the end of our journey was our final pitch to our client. We just received our grade for our pitch and from my point of view, those long nights of work definitely proved worthwhile. It was also such a crazy experience presenting a REAL-LIFE pitch to a client for the first time. As one of the speakers I learned new ways of presenting that sort of put me out of my comfort zone. I'm more of a scripted speaker, saying things I've memorized over and over. However, for this pitch I felt that I had to think on my feet more and respond to the reactions of our client during the presentation. I didn't think I could pull this off very well, but I felt I did better than I would have anticipated.

I also became more nervous when the clients appeared. Even though we are still students, I realized that, "whoa, this is for real." These people are actually looking to us for help, and I've got to try and convince them that we have some pretty good ideas here! Scary.

Moreover, I say this is the end of my PR functionings here as a student, but I also see this as just the beginning. Our pitch Monday was the first of the many pitches I might end up doing if I continue to go forward with this major. As far as that goes, I must say that it has been an amazing and eye-opening experience so far, through good times and bad (my group members can tell you all about that) and I know I will always look back on this as how I started my PR career.