Var's first post

My name is Vardanush Davtian and I am currently interning at Dana Dramov Consulting which is a fashion public relations agency based in the Flat Iron District. This is my first internship I've ever had and I am hoping it will be baby steps towards my dream job of being the head of marketing for a high profile clients in my near future. My responsibilities at this internship include sample trafficking (loaning out, tracking, delivering and picking up client samples), managing showroom inventory, scanning for and clipping credits, researching potential bloggers and publications we can reach out to based on the different clients' targeted audiences, managing inventory and organizing the showroom. 

Interning at Dana Dramov Consulting has taught me a few of new things that I did not know about the media and public relations industry. Prior to working here, I did not know what clipping credits was. Now, I am responsible for clipping all credits we come across in magazines and various publications. Clipping credits is a process in which I scan online and print publications to see if any of our clients' products have been written about or mentioned. Once finding a credit, I "clip" the title/logo of the publication, the headline, the author, the images of the products and a sentence from the written work which briefly summarizes the story the product was used for. I paste and arrange these pieces on a Microsoft Word page in a specific format and save it as a PDF. These clippings then get sent to the clients, get posted on their social media and on the Dana Dramov social media. 
Last week I began practicing writing my own press releases for different fashion clients we work with. I had previously practiced writing press releases in a school course I took, but I found it rather difficult to draft up a fashion press release. For a fashion client, a press release has to be very simple and straight forward, and not glitzy and glamorous as I originally assumed. When my supervisor handed my draft back with notes and corrections, I was disappointed at how bad I did. Now, I've placed "executing an amazing press release" as number one on my to do list before finishing this internship. 

Honestly speaking, this internship is unfortunately not what I expected to be. I expected to have a more hands-on experience but I feel it is falling quite short of that. Although I am responsible for filling out loan forms for samples, packing them up, shipping them out, going to publications to retrieve them, working on social media and other things like that, I feel I am not learning the fundamentals of the industry. With all the running around and doing errands all day, there is not enough time for me to learn significant and valuable things that would help me when I transition to other internships. 

In order to gain a more valuable experience at this internship, I think several improvements could be made to make my time there more worthwhile. This Friday my supervisor is going to take the other intern and me out for lunch to answer questions we'd like answered about the industry. I will ask her all the questions I have in mind and tell her that I'd like to be given projects that will teach me different things about the industry. I understand part of my responsibilities include sample trafficking which is a crucial part of the job, but I would like half of my day to include teaching and mentoring about the different aspects of their jobs and the industry. I think my experience can be improved once I am thought of less as just an intern for running errands but as student wanting to gain valuable knowledge about all things fashion pr and marketing. Being given time during the day to do this will improve my experience a lot.