Almost Halfway through the Semester

I am not sure how it is already the end of week six and I’m almost halfway through my first semester of grad school.  It has sure flown by quick!

Each week, I am getting more adjusted to being back in school.  I also feel like I am still trying to adjust my studying routine each week to make sure I am getting all my work done.  Even with three classes, the workload is still a lot to handle and keep track of everything.  While some aspects of grad school have been very challenging for me, I am already feeling so fulfilled by the process of learning everything I can about this new career area that I want to enter.  I can already see how all of my classes will relate to what I want in my career going forward.  I am also excited to be working towards something new after the last year or so of trying to figure out what was next for me. 

This semester, I am taking three of the four core classes required for my degree…Principles of Strategic Communication, Research for Strategic Communication and Communication Theory.  The classes do overlap each other a little bit as far as the content, so I have heard some of the concepts multiple times.  That is really helpful to me because this program is very fast-paced and there is so much information that we have already covered so far.  I’m not going to lie…sometimes I have a hard time keeping everything straight.

In the research and theory classes, we are going to start doing the groundwork for our capstone project that we will work on next semester.  I have had a pretty good idea of what my research project was going to be since before classes started.  It will be focused on social media and the sports industry and I am excited to really dive into the subject area and see where it goes.

Now that I am more settled in, I have also started to focus on some steps in preparing myself for my career once I am done with school.  I decided to join the school’s chapter of PRSSA (Public Relations Students Society of America).  During each of their chapter meetings, they have different PR professionals come and talk about their career paths and what area of the industry they work in.  At last week’s meeting, the speaker was a young professional who has worked in both a PR firm/agency and in an organization’s own communications department and talked about the differences in those environments.  I had never even considered the idea of working in a PR firm/agency, but after listening to her, it definitely opened my eyes to that aspect of the business.  I think I will definitely gain a lot of good knowledge of the PR industry through being involved in this organization. 

I also started working on re-vamping my resume for when I have to start applying for internships for next summer.  It is definitely a little daunting for me to think about going through the internship application process again, but hopefully it will result in a good opportunity for me come next summer.  I already have a long list of places that I want to apply to!

I am also still trying to figure out the balance of concentrating on schoolwork and taking time for myself.  I am not very good at “turning off my brain” to school-related responsibilities even when I am trying to take a break from it.  Working out/swimming at least a couple of times per week helps me get re-energized.  I am also trying to read a little bit for pleasure on the Metro everyday while commuting to and from campus.  My pleasure reading of choice for the next year is going to be young reader novels that I either didn’t read when I was younger or re-reading some of my childhood favorites!