I’ve blogged my butt off.

Catherine Paneral

Jour 4460

Blog Fifteen

I cannot believe I have written 15 blogs for this class. It didn’t really sound too terrible when it was “just” one blog per week. But holy cow, weeks go by fast. Before I knew it, it was Friday again.

This class has been quite an experience. It was nonstop PR. It was hard and challenging but it taught me that I know what to do with this profession. Sort of. I may not be the absolute best at it yet but I feel like PR is something you continue to learn as you go. Ethical decisions will arise and I will have to make some choices. Hopefully good ones.

Thanks to this class my portfolio is bursting with examples of my work. You name it, I’ve got it. (please limit the naming to PR items only.)

If it weren’t for this class, or 4470 or 4210, I would have never started blogging. And while I do think I may take a break from it for a bit because my brain is fried, I think I will try to keep up with it.

I realized more and more every day how tough PR can be. Clients are dumb and say dumber things. I think they enjoy making our jobs hard. But the challenge is fun. I hate but when I hit a wall and don’t know what to do because it sucks but it makes me think more creatively about HOW I will handle the situation at hand.

When we were working on our project for the City of Denton and I said to put flyers in everyone’s shopping bag, I thought it was a shady way of making sure everyone got a copy, whether they wanted it or not. Then we I got the graded copy back and saw that it was a great idea I was shocked. It made me realize that not every idea I have is a bad one, ha.

While the world of PR still terrifies me, I really do feel prepared for it. I may have to cross my legs super tight because I have to pee so bad from being extra nervous while my boss looks over my communications plan that I just put together. But at least I know how to write one. I know how to develop brochures, newsletters, flyers, campaigns, surveys, and more. I know how to do it. And it’s all thanks to my PR Communications class. And the other courses I’ve been taking for the last two years.

So here I go…off into the real world. Fingers crossed.

US Dept. of Labor regulates kids working on farms

Catherine Paneral

Jour 4460

Blog Fourteen

When I was growing up, there was nothing in this world that made my heart race like a country boy working on the farm. I could just stare for hours watching them load up trailers with hay bales, The sun shining on their back. Sweat beads slowly rolling down their chest hitting every chiseled ab on its way down. Don’t even get me started about what went through my head when I watched them drive a tractor. Oh dear Lord.

My parents only had one son and even though my two sisters and I were raised to work on the farm, the three of us together were barely as strong as my brother. So to make up for the loss of not having another son, my parents paid my brothers friends to work on the farm.

It was a way of life where I grew up. Most of the parents in my town didn’t believe in giving kids an allowance. If they wanted money to buy things, they had to work for it. Some kids even worked on the farm because they needed to help support their family. And because it is pretty much impossible to get any sort of job before you’re 16, maybe even 15 depending where you live, kids in my town worked on a farm.

Well, apparently the Department of Labor is trying to take away the fond memories of the farm boys that I had as a young girl. That’s right; they are trying to regulate “kids” working on a farm.

“United States Department of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis rolled out the proposal which calls for preventing anyone under 18 from handling raw materials on a farm, including most types of livestock, [and anyone under 16 would be barred from operating a motorized vehicle that sits more than] six feet above the ground (Hunter 2012).”

Who the heck do you think you are Hildy? Working on a farm teaches kids how to run a business, work hard and have discipline. It is almost like joining the army. I think every kid should have to work on a farm at some point in their life.

So my question to the above proposal was can they really do this? Can they really regulate kids working on farms? My grandparents had 10 kids so they would have free labor on the farm. “According to the Department of Labor, the laws, which have not been updated since 1970, would not affect children and teens working on their [families] farm, only those who are employed elsewhere.”

OK, that makes me feel a little bit better knowing the government isn’t trying to stop child farm labor completely. But I still think it is just a way of life for country people. Kids work on a farm whether they live there or not.

While farms are huge businesses, they aren’t anything like huge corporations. There aren’t hundreds of people in different departments running the business. On the farm mom and dad are the boss. They are also the finance and accounting department. They are the marketing, advertising and PR department.  Those two people coordinate how to run the entire family business.

Traits like that should be passes down through kids working on a farm. “The only reason I have the work ethics that I have is from the farm. Maybe our country could actually get out of debt if people learned how to work. Obama and labor department need to put kids back on farm,” says Jeremy Prudlick.

Source:

http://hudsonvalley.ynn.com/content/top_stories/581065/local-farmers-oppose-proposed-changes-to-child-labor-laws/

Consider Me Ethical

Catherine Paneral

Jour 4470

Blog Five

Oh dear lord. Where do I begin?

I really liked the case studies. If people complained about them, they are dumb. I looked forward to the presentation days every time. The best way to learn ethics, other than experiencing them yourself, is to study ethical cases.

What I enjoyed most about the case study presentations was that I had never even heard about 75 percent of the topics. I had no idea Cracker Barrel wouldn’t employ gays and lesbians. I didn’t know Blockbusters “End of Late Fees” wasn’t really the end of late fees. If you would have asked me who Aaron Feuerstein or Malden Mills were, I would have asked “Who?”

4470 was like a two for one class. I learned so much about ethics and what you should and shouldn’t do but in addition to that I learned about a lot of history that has happened over the years. It made me really sad when I felt like a group didn’t go very in depth because I always wanted to know more. I like hearing every little detail.

I liked the lectures. It was like story time and story time is my most favorite thing in the world. I could seriously just sit and listen to an interesting lecture all day long. I liked learning about the privacy laws and the code of ethics. I feel like a lot of the laws and ethics we learned about should be common sense, should being the key word. It blows my mind that not everyone follows these set guidelines.

I learned that some of the students are amazing writers…and some that I have no clue how they got this far in college. 

I became good friends with my group member and I am extremely grateful for that. Those boys made our group projects so much easier because we all got along and everyone pulled their own weight. But overall they were seriously the best group I have ever had.

I really liked Sheri Broyles presentation on subliminal advertising. Advertising is interesting to me but I think I would die if I would have studied it. It was nice to get a little taste lecture about it without having to actually pay for the class or do any assignments, ha.

I know the trolls spamming the class hashtag was annoying but I learned so much from the experience. I followed the Twitter feed as everything was happening and it was crazy to me. I had to wrap my head around the fact that in the PR world this could be a real thing and I would have to know how to react.

I am going to miss the class. I don’t feel like I could ever learn enough about ethics and the law. So many of the cases have different dependencies for making decisions and I while I personally think they should have all been easy decisions to make, I learned how to really apply communitarianism and utilitarianism. I realized how many of the decisions were probably not easy to make, especially in the moment, but you have to weigh your options and make sacrifices.

Advertising and PR are not easy and now I feel like they are constantly being challenged by anyone and everyone. While I am still very terrified of being an adult practicing PR in the real world I at least feel prepared enough to not crash and burn. And if it doesn’t work out then I can always come back for grad school.