Why did you choose your course?
Lauren: I chose to study Communication as I am a person with interests in a large range of topics (and it doesn’t take me much to become interested in more!), and I wanted to choose a degree that wouldn’t restrict or corner me into a particular industry or sector. I always loved creative subjects at school, as well as the writing and more analytical topics such as business management. I felt the Bachelor of Communication combined all these interests well, and having come out the other side of the degree, I can say it well and truly did!
What do you like most about your course?
Lauren: I really loved that even though I was specialising in Public Relations, I was still able to expand into other disciplines of the course, including Advertising and Digital Media. In addition to this, still having the freedom of electives to have a taste-test of completely different areas of study. In doing so I felt I was able to complement my focus area of Public Relations, broadening my influences and challenging my thought process.
What aspects of your course do you feel are making you ready for the workforce?
Lauren: Without a doubt the internships, and the follow-up units to these. My main internship between second and third year, and the support in gaining this, really helped to cement key learnings from the course to that point. Additionally, the real-world experience helped me realise what I liked in the workplace, and what I would like in a job post-uni. The follow up unit from this internship also far exceeded my expectations in how much it would help me understand myself and my interests. Although a strange feeling having a unit so self-examining, I took a great deal of knowledge about me as not only an aspiring communications practitioner but me as an individual and what makes me tick.
What work-integrated learning or internship opportunities have you had at Deakin?
Lauren: Throughout my degree, I was fortunate to have several internship opportunities. The first at the end of my first year was at Life Saving Victoria. Having only been a year into my degree, I felt I was thrown into the deep end at LSV (pardon the pun), having to quickly learn industry knowledge and apply what I had learnt from the year at uni to help their comms team. My second internship I completed through the “Interns @ Deakin Freelancing Hub”. Feeling a bit more confident in myself, this internship saw me working with two Masters of Engineering Student and a Final Year Psych student on a project for a Geelong Not-for-Profit. Challenging in a different sense, I learnt to work with people from different disciplines, and harness my transferable skills from Communications to work on the project. My third internship was one that I was really looking forward to, and had planned well in advance. This was with Melbourne Communications Agency “Think HQ”, who work on socially-positive driven projects. Here I dove into the fast-paced world of agency work, and loved every minute. This internship really hammered home that I wanted to work on communications that made a difference, using creativity to help do so. Lucky last, heading into my final year I completed an internship at the Geelong Cats as a media assistant to the AFLW team. Most similar to my work at Life Saving Victoria, here I got to test the skills in media relations, while also giving some practice photography and running a social media page. Although I had never thought about sporting communications, I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the area, and the complexity behind it all! In addition to my internships, in my final year at Deakin I was lucky enough to take part in the PRIA’s (Public Relations Institute of Australia) Pitch This! Competition, giving a team of four of us the opportunity to pitch a campaign for Cancer Council NSW. Completing this alongside my final trimester really tied together all my skills I had learnt throughout my degree; not only ideas and concepts, but how to work as a team (remotely may I add), liaise with clients and even seek advice from a professional in the industry.
What other experiences have you enjoyed at Deakin?
Lauren: In my second year I was very lucky to be accepted to a 3 week-intensive at Roskilde University in Denmark. Here I spent three weeks at a “FabLab” learning how to code and program, mainly neopixel lights! Staying in the heart of Copenhagen, each day we travelled out to Roskilde to complete the program, working on our project. Our project was an interactive light installation that we then had to test at Roskilde Festival – Northern Europe’s largest music festival. Mind-blowing is definitely an understatement in describing the entire experience. Not only did I get to travel around one of the happiest countries on Earth for three weeks, but I discovered a strong interest in coding and protoyping – learning about “Interactive Communication Design”; something that I hope to explore over these next few years.
Lauren studied a Bachelor of Communication (Public Relations)
‘In my final year at Deakin I was lucky enough to take part in the PRIA’s (Public Relations Institute of Australia) Pitch This! Competition, giving a team of four of us the opportunity to pitch a campaign for Cancer Council NSW.’
View the Deakin student team’s pitch below.