Abigail Valerius

PUBLIC RELATIONS

Reflection

I am a Communication and Media Studies major and a Sociology minor and I feel the two complement each other very well. I did research in my sociology minor that looked at the media’s portrayal of young women who are incarcerated and having an understanding of the media helped with that research.

Being a student of Communication and Media Studies at St. Norbert College has transformed me as an individual and a professional because I look at media and the information and content that is posted in a more in-depth way. In Principles of Mass Communication during my freshman year, I learned about product placement and to this day, I can not watch a TV show or movie without noticing the product placement. In Interpersonal Communication I learned about other people and positive ways to communicate with others. All of my classes at St. Norbert’s and the Washington Media Institute positively impacted me as an individual. My classes at the Washington Media Institute in the fall of 2018 helped me professionally because every day I was in a workplace setting at a Public Relations and Political Affairs Internship and my classes were more along the lines of workshops that helped me with video, audio, photography, press releases, and many more things I will be doing in my career.

After college, I would like to pursue a career in Public Relations and I feel that I am a bit ahead of the game when it comes to post-college careers because of the experience I had in Washington D.C. The company I interned for was SevenTwenty Strategies, a public and media relations firm. At this internship, I gained real-world experience and was able to explore all different areas of media, public relations, and communications. I worked directly with Ryan Shucard, the vice president of the company. He allowed me to learn and master all the different areas of media and public relations. I conducted research for client accounts, sat-in on conference calls, writing press releases, social media posts, and so much more. I frequently worked with our account directors on client projects and also learned valuable information on customer service in this specific industry. Fridays I was in the classroom, we went to on-site visits and while we were on those visits we met and spoke with Washington D.C. professionals in the media industry.