By: Jessica McAffee

I can’t believe that my internship at Pushing the Envelope is almost complete. Not having any prior marketing or PR experience before this internship, I was at first a little afraid of what I was going to get myself into. But as the internship went on, I found myself learning new skills that I know will benefit me in my future career.

One skill I really found useful that I learned this summer was writing a news release. Before this internship, I knew very little about writing and posting news releases. But, on one of my first days at PTE I was told to draft a news release about an upcoming event. At first I was really nervous about writing one because I knew it was going to be sent to various media and posted to media websites, but the team helped me through the process- teaching me what information to include, how to format the release and even a little about AP style writing. Now I feel like I can write a news release with ease. I love looking back at the releases I’ve written and seeing which ones have gotten the most views by journalists (it’s a great feeling and makes me pretty happy.)

Another thing I have really enjoyed so far is brainstorming social media campaign ideas. Developing a social media campaign has to be one of the most interesting things I’ve done so far in my internship. It gives me the chance to let my creativity flow and to conceptualize different ways a client can interact with their followers on different social media platforms.

Despite only having a few weeks left at PTE, I know I am going to learn even more and I can’t wait!