Chapter 3... I thought it was the least interesting chapter so far. Although, after going through this chapter, it was made more clear to me how necessary the public relations profession is in our world. And not only was its importance made more apparent, but more specifically how naturally it fits in to so many aspects of the business world. I realized that this profession will always be sought after, because we are needed in time of tragedy, upbringing, trend setting, expansion, downsizing, and in every other type of development. Is there a big business boom? Somebody's gonna have to coordinate the new activity and let the public know what is up and coming. Did somebody really screw something up in an organization? Well, you're gonna need somebody to go out there and explain to everybody what the hell is going on and how it's gonna be fixed. I like the idea of how part of our job is to be able to find a way to tell people, "Things are gonna be O.K." The part that makes me unesasy is what extents some PR professionals have gone to bend that statement.

The page that drew my attention the most was one of the last pages that just kind of put the ups and downs of the profession in a summary. In particular, the sentence, "If anything, we have become more aware of how much our world is interconnected-and often dysfunctional."
This got me because that's what everything pretty much boils down to. The world is messed up. We need people devote their lives to maintaining relationships between publics because people can't get along. People are always going to disagree. People are always going to have different perspectives on how to handle a new situation. And none of that is ever going to change. Then that made me start thinking about people who have gone under the gun, like for instance, this lady from the Red Cross, Healy. I mean, she didn't try to screw the Liberty Fund thing up. Like, I'm pretty sure that her main objective was not to get herself to be forced to resign and have thousands and thousands of people mad at her. Granted, you've gotta wonder what she was thinking to screw up as big as she did, something in her head obviously made her think that she was doing the best possible thing. And somebody had to have agreed with her. I don't know, just kind of blows my mind. Makes you think about what kind of pressures and stresses she was put under at that time to make her blind as to what her outcomes would be after the rash decisions she made. It makes me want to be 5 years old again so all I have to be stressed about is coloring in between the lines in my coloring book.
Another big word from the sentence I noted above was "interconnected." SO true. I think that this word is so true that it's scary. Like, I have learned to treat everybody with utmost respect. Everybody. Even someone who you think can do you absolutely no good, it doesn't matter. Because somebody is always watching you. And that guy that you think is a nobody knows a somebody, and somehow things come back to bite you if you take a wrong step. Because our world is so small. You have to be so aware of the moves you make in the field, like for instance, Ivy Lee, because no matter what scale of work you are engaged in, somebody knows somebody who knows somebody who knows what every move you have made.

I'm starting to get more and more into the book. I'm glad that I'm forced to write these blogs, because it's making me actually read the material, which is definitely more than I can say for my other classes :)

Person #1
What is public relations?
Interacting with people. A person in PR has to have a good personality, be very talkative, and be outgoing.

Name someone in a high-profile PR job.
Marilyn Monroe: She interacts with her public and has relations with them.

Now, explain your definition for PR, derived from the textbook and class discussion. Ask their impression of this definition.
She said that she basically had that same idea of what PR was except for she had in mind that a PR manager or technician only interacted with one person or a group of people one time. She wasn't aware that a PR practitioner had to work on building relationships with their clients.

Person #2
What is public relations?
How politicians see the public and how they correspond with what goes on in the world.

Name someone in a high-profile PR job.
Condoleeza Rice: I hear about her a lot in the news and on comedy shows. She is in the public eye a lot, and she makes a lot of differences in the White House.

Now, explain your definition for PR, derived from the textbook and class discussion. Ask their impression of this definition.
She thought that my definition seemed more appropriate and that it grasped a broader scope than hers. She also wanted me to mention that her GPA is more than a point lower than mine, and that she doesn't have a clue of what she is talking about.

Person #3
What is public relations?
Communicating with people, talking a lot, the same thing as marketing.

Name someone in a high-profile PR job.
George Bush. He makes a lot of speeches.

Now, explain your definition for PR, derived from the textbook and class discussion. Ask their impression of this definition.
I think that it's similar to what I said but just worded differently. It made me have a better understanding of the whole job description.

The biggest thing that I noticed about my first question to them was how they all seemed to think that public relations was a verb! Their first words in their answers were things like "communicating" or "interacting." And that's not incorrect, but if I were to answer the question, my response would start with something like, "A person who...." I mean, if I asked what a firefighter was, they wouldn't have had an answer beginning with, "Putting out fires." So that was really interesting to me. It showed me how unfamiliar people are with the profession.

When I asked the second question, I got the same facial expression from every single respondent. It pretty much consisted of a look similar to that of "The Rock," a shoulder shrug, and a long period of silence. Although none of the answers were correct in that none of the people's job titles include the words "public relations," I did realize that each person answered who they did because they felt their answer choices had attributes that all public relations practitioners should indeed have. They all deal with publics and try to withhold healthy relationships with them. It didn't surprise me that two of the three answers given to me were personalities in the political science field. I think that a lot of people are under the impression that the public relations field only fills jobs in the government, when we all know that in reality the government doesn't even fill the largest amount of jobs out of all the PR employment settings.

On my third question, I thought that my answers were rather blah. I guess I could have done something to spice them up a bit by asking more probing questions. I didn't. An ongoing theme in the answers was that they learned something by my definition. They didn't really have a full understanding beforehand of what the job entailed, and after they learned my defintion, their cloudiness about the subject seemed to lift.

Definition of PR.

I'm going to keep this short.

The occupation of processing and managing the relationship between an organization and its publics.

I hope that there is no wrong answer for this question.

Chapter One... pretty much an overview of the Public Relations world: what tasks are involved in the job description, the bad rep that the profession is trying to shake, the confusion and debate over its definition, and the potential that this relatively new field possesses. Within the chapter, there was a breakdown of the steps involved in the public relations process as well as the elements that compose the public relations field. An ongoing word brought up was "values": more specifically, the values-driven public relations. The chapter also overviewed the increasingly popular theme of assuming responsibility and accountability while practicing this up and coming profession.

I'm new to this major. I feel like I just fell asleep, woke up, and found myself here. I ran out of core classes and had to pick a direction, and one of my friends informally mentioned that I may have a knack for PR, so I just jumped in. I don't really know what I'm getting myself in to... and some of the things that Ch 1 said kind of erked me, but at the same time, I think that my personality fits the profile of many of PR's demands. I know that I want to deal with people, even though most everybody is a pain in the ass, and I want to be able to be in a position where I can make a difference somewhere. One thing that really draws me to PR is that it is a growing field. It seems like there is so much room for change and opportunity, and that excites me. When everybody in class was talking about their experiences that they have already had in the field, it kind of made me feel inadequate, but then I realized that everybody was in my shoes at one time, too. So I am O.K. with that. On one of the first pages where it asked, "What did you think public relations was?" I was one of those few that said, "I don't know." I literally highlighted "I don't know" in my book. But the chapter somewhat made me feel better about not knowing exactly what it was, because apparently nobody else knows either. I really enjoyed Judy Phair's memo that was at the end of the chapter. Her bullet points mentioned in her little blurb are really things that I think that I can commit to. I like the idea that in this field you have to stay open-minded and current. I feel like I have a worldly background; both my mom and dad are from out of the country, and my dad currently works in China, and I have had the opportunity to travel, so I fit the mold in that aspect. And I am full-heartedly willing to jump in this field with open arms and go where ever it takes me. So that makes me a little more at peace with my decision to go into PR. The chapter was well-written and I think did a good job of setting the tone for the rest of the book. There is a lot of information, but I am ready to test myself and curious to see how much I end up liking or hating it.