By Caroline Nimnicht
In July 2017, I went overseas to study abroad in London for five weeks. It was hands down the best decision I ever made. While there I took two classes: British Voice Diction and Dialect, and Public Relations Communication Crisis with one of our own professors, Dr. Groover. While abroad I knew I would be studying public relations, although I didn’t anticipate utilizing the skills I had already obtained.
A big part of studying abroad is adapting to and learning about the culture you’re in so we were only in the classroom two days out of the week; the other three were spent diving into London’s culture. For Dr. Groover’s Crisis Communication class, we spent our Wednesday’s going on field trips throughout London. For one of the field trips, we spent a day at an international PR firm, ABI Public Relations. Members of the firm came in and provided insightful real world PR advice which I found especially beneficial considering it was coming from individuals who had been working in the public relations for years. One of the lecturers actually had an exercise of writing a press release which was a little stressful at first, but ended up being extremely helpful with the constructive feedback we each received.
Since we didn’t have class or field trips on Fridays, some friends and I traveled to Paris and Rome for two of the weekends. These countries were much different than London since a different language was spoken, but my friends and I still managed to navigate our way through just fine while simultaneously making friends along the way. A big part of public relations involves networking and interpersonal relationship skills. Just about everywhere I went, I met someone new and expanded my network.
As I’ve said, going abroad was the best decision I have ever made. I grew in so many aspects as a person because of it and can say with full confidence that I am and will be a better PR practitioner because of it.