My Internship

My internship is just about half over (and my time here in Israel is more than half over, which is hard to believe!), so I figured it was about time to write a little about my experiences in my internship thus far. I work Sunday-Wednesday 9-4. It still feels weird to me that Sunday is a regular workday here! Ruder Finn is a large international public relations firm, with branches all over the world, including five in the U.S. Their office in Jerusalem is quite small. There is the CEO, CFO, receptionist, five full time staff members, and then myself and two interns who only work fifteen hours a week. Compare that to Ruder Finn's New York office, which I think has a couple hundred! They are all American, except for one Israeli (who is in charge of the domestic media). Ruder Finn Israel is the only English based public relations firm in Israel. They do most of their business for Israeli companies that do business in the U.S. Aside from the CEO and CFO, all the staff members are really young--in their 20s and early 30s at the oldest. Three of them have babies at home. So it's pretty cool to work with such a young staff. They are all super nice and provide me with a lot of positive feedback, which is always very encouraging. And I actually do real work--no making coffee or copies! I have been doing a lot of media lists (putting together spreadsheets of relevant journalists' contact information), market intel (what's happening in the news in a particular field), press releases, clipping (finding news articles that have been written about our clients and extrapolating them),social media (yes--sometimes I get to play around on facebook and twitter for work!) and always tons of research. It has definitely been an adjustment for me to sit in front of a computer for seven hours a day, and--I'm not going to lie--sometimes after 7 hours of computer work, I want to kill myself!! And working in that environment, I am afraid I have developed a bit of a coffee habit (this from a girl who would never touch the stuff before I started there!) So it is definitely boring at times, but sometimes it is quite interesting. For instance, one of the clients I have been doing a lot of work for is a very controversial organization that is against radical Islam. There was so much negative press about them before they hired Ruder Finn a few months ago, so it is a very challenging PR job--but that is what makes it so interesting! I have also been able to sit in on a few client meetings, and observe and take notes. I appreciate that my coworkers and boss allow me to do that. I feel like I honestly have learned more about public relations in these past two months than I have learned in four months of school. I still don't know if I want to do public relations or not, but in the meantime I feel like I'm getting so much invaluable experience that will come in handy no matter what I decide to do with my life.