What I've learned

This class has been one of the more challenging ones that I've taken over my 3 1/2 year college experience. It's been a learning process unlike any other. While it's been frustrating at times, I truly feel that the things we've learned will honestly help us to become expert practitioners.

Many of the actual pieces we've done, we learned about in previous classes. Many of us thought we knew how to make a PR plan, how to write a press release, etc. But there are several things that I think we all can say we never truly appreciated.

1. AP style is a monster, until it's not. I've become rather intimate with my AP style book. I think we can all say that there have been many frustrations. And yet, going back through all of my work, I realized that if I had taken the time, right from the beginning, to reference my style book, all of my pieces would have been better. The reasons for using AP style are numerous, but there is one in particular that I've come to appreciate: AP makes things easier. When you're using proper style, it's easier to write exactly what you're thinking, and know that the people reading it will understand.

2. Anything worth writing is worth writing twice. Husselbee talks about this some in his News Writing class. Your first draft is almost always going to be trash. You might think it's golden, I know I usually do, but the honest truth is that your first draft is just about getting your thoughts down. Once you've done that, you can go back and write it again, taking only the best parts from the original. When I've done that, and when I've done proper AP style, my papers have turned out amazingly well. When I haven't... let's just say you can tell.

3. If it's informative, but not interesting, it's not informative. It doesn't matter how well you get your thoughts across, how precise you are, unless you write something worth reading. This is probably the most important thing I've learned in this class. You can write a press release that is stylistically perfect, gets all of your content out in a clear and concise manner, but you have not succeeded in your job if people don't chose to read it.

These may not be the things that I signed up to learn this semester, but now that I know them, I know that I'm going to be a better PR professional. Thank you Professor.