Peek at the life of Ad & PR student

 The Advertising and Public Relations course is a dynamic course is a dynamic course which entails holistic learning through activities that take us outside the four-walled classroom. Here’s a peek at my everyday life as a student at St. Joseph University. The day starts at 7am with industry experts. Courses Integrated Marketing Communication, Consumer Behaviour, Media Planning, Brand Management, Crisis Management, Public Relations, Account Planning and Management, etc are taught by industrial experts who are also working in the industry. They bring their expertise to the class which gives an insight into how things actually work behind the glamour. They impart knowledge in form of past experience and case studies rather than strictly sticking to just academic books.

Along with these regular classes, there are weekly guest lectures and workshops organized by the students after 12, noon. Some of the sessions include discussions on topics like “AI and Advertising”, “Writing Creatively”, “Crafting Media Pitches”, “What makes a Good Press Release”, etc. It gives us students an opportunity to meet more professionals, network, and get all our questions answered without beating around the bush. It upholds the mirror of the company's dynamics, these interactive sessions also prepare us to conduct ourselves in a professional setting. 

The schedule is paired up with regular assignments and extra reading to keep ourselves informed about the happenings and grow our knowledge bank. Here, reading newspapers has been inculcated as part of our everyday schedule. 

Apart from these regular activities, we have engaged in outreach camps. For the camps, we visited Bijapur and got to experience rural India. It personally gave me a wake-up call and made me realize how difficult life is for some people. In a way, it made me more humble and allowed me to acknowledge the tiniest privileges that I had taken for granted. I've seen the ground reality of the people who will become the consumers for whom I will work. 

We have a student representative in PRCAI and had sessions with PR professionals as well as the opportunity to become associates with them to become certified P.R. professionals. We learned how to deal with certain situations and how important it is to keep ourselves updated with not only the workings of our industry but the world as a whole. It gets difficult to wrap my head around certain topics initially but I am always encouraged to ask questions. As a part of our event management course, we went into the field of events and worked with the company George P. Johnson on events at Meta, IBM, and LinkedIn, and organized a literature fest in association with a publishing company- Authors Channel.

We actively work on the social media platform for our association ‘Brandstorm’ which is created and run by the students on a regular basis. As part of this association we also invite guest lecturers to conduct sessions on various topics which are open to all students. My schedule as a student keeps fluctuating and there is no fixed time to call it a day but isn't that how the industry works? Even when you are off work you are still available to take calls and deal with clients. Although it gets hectic at the end it’s rewarding.