"What is PR?"

Source: http://bba-intl.com

Public relations! Most people are unsure of what that means exactly when you say it. I tell my family all the time I am a PR major, and that basically gives them open door to look at me like I am crazy until I ask them, “Do you guys know what PR is?”

After I explain it to them their faces change to a more confident and relieved look that I haven’t picked a career where I would be struggling to pay bills all my life. Of course, they don’t tell me those exact words but, I can pretty much read minds just by the looks on their face, and I am pretty my mom Googled the salary I can make per year. When it comes to my generation of parents I can see how they may not be familiar with exactly what PR is and that’s fine.

What gets me is the amount of current and incoming students that have never heard about public relations. While on one of my class room visits, I stood in front of a class and asked who were all PR majors and one student raised their hand. Sadly, that did not surprise me I was not expecting that many hands to go up anyway. I was shocked at the fact that when I asked who knew what PR was, no one even raised an inch. In this class, there were a few athletes, so I asked one of them, “Would you like to go the NFL one day?”

Of course he responded saying yes.

I continued to explain what I would do if I was his PR practitioner, and immediately everyone became more interested. I explained how we can do anything from planning events to working for one of the biggest fortune 100 companies, because everyone needs a PR representative.

There is no reason behind this story, but I will say that most people just need a full description and explanation of what PR is. It’s one of the rapidly growing professions today, and people should be more aware of what we do.

Janae Gordon is a senior majoring in public relations and serves as the VP of Social Media for EMU PRSSA. Janae hopes to one day go into sports or entertainment public relations.