As I write my last blog for the Scripps PRSSA website, I’m sitting in Schoonover Center for Communication.
A place I call my second home in Athens, Schoonover has served myself and PRSSA for three years. However, freshman year I thought I would feel this way about Scripps Hall. I can still remember meeting up with friends from my learning community in order to go to a Scripps PRSSA info session. Following that info session, I spent time in Scripps 111 learning about the wonderful world of PR every Monday for the whole school year.
Emily Barber and I would sit in the back, and with every opportunity we would say “let’s do that next year,” feeling like it would never come. That was in 2013.
We recruited more friends to join the organization that required us to tweet our hearts out every Monday, and before we knew it we had a family.
We joined executive board, saw our friends explore different countries in study abroad, attended National Conference and picked up a few mentees along the way. Junior year was a busy one, and I regret how quickly it went by.
Little did I know while I was sitting in Scripps 111, I would blink and be standing in front of one of those fateful Monday meetings running for president.
Little did I know, I would blink and be driving to my last networking trip.
Little did I know, I would cry after my senior send off as I turned around and saw the new executive board…absent of the friends I made in Scripps 111.
As I depart this lovely place I now call home, I want to leave some advice for those I am leaving behind and for those I have yet to meet.
- Don’t leave Athens with any regrets. See the sunset at Bong Hill. Get another mocha at Court Street Coffee. Slack off on an assignment to celebrate a friend’s accomplishment.
- Get caught up in your own life- not anyone else’s. I know the old adage is to put others first always, but you need to look out for yourself.
- Save some gen. ed. classes for your junior/senior year. If you end up taking all classes in your major, you’ll have five group or project based classes.
- Apply, apply, apply. I applied to 123 jobs/internships for after graduation before I even got one offer. I applied to 45 internships for one summer before accepting the first internship I applied to. There is no shame in staying up until 2 a.m. writing cover letters and editing your resume for the 1,442,568th time.
- Do things that make you feel good, just for you. Get Dairy Queen even when you don’t need it. Drive with your windows down and end up in the country. Take a different path to work/class/meetings, because you never know what you might discover. Do “freshman things” as a senior.
Live it up, because soon enough you’ll blink and be driving away from Appalachian paradise, your car too full of memories to even begin to count.
Gentry Bennett is a senior strategic communication major and our outgoing president. While we will all miss Gentry here at Scripps PRSSA, we know she will be doing great things. Follow Gentry’s quest to take over the world and National Park excursions on Twitter @Gen_andTonic