My Time at Athene – Megan Frost

I’ve just completed my second year in my English Literature undergraduate degree at the University of Bristol. During this year, with the prospect of graduation next year looming and the reality that I will have to go out into the real world, I can safely say that I started to get a little bit spooked. So I decided that I needed to make use of my summer and do some vital work experience. Still being a little bit unsure about exactly what I want to do, but being confident in my communication skills, I was directed towards the idea of PR by some interesting talks during the Arts Careers Fair week at Uni.

I then started looking around at PR companies both in Bristol and around my local area (Lincolnshire). After exploring opportunities in PR and publishing, I eventually came across an opportunity at Athene. Now, Peterborough isn’t exactly local for me – it involves an hour drive or a 30 minute drive and subsequent train journey (both of which I tried). However tiring the travel has been, the experience I have gained this week has made up for it.

To say I have only done five days so far, I think I’ve covered quite a lot. The first day was important in settling in – which was made far easier by how lovely and welcoming the team at Athene are – and it involved a general introduction to the Education PR section, the weekly team meeting, writing my first ever press release and conducting research for a new business development. The second day saw me starting to write blog posts (again, a first for me) for Work In Peterborough. This is something which certainly kept me busy over the week; I think in total I researched and produced 10 posts!  Through this I learnt how to use WordPress and then later I was introduced to Hootsuite to handle different social media platforms for some of Athene’s Education clients.

Other tasks over the week included further blogs, press releases, social media posts and research. I also got the chance to get a bit more creative – this was probably one of my highlights of the week because it took me back to my designing days of GCSE Product design. I designed a poster for an event for the Ramsey Deserves More campaign and also two roadside banners for North Cambridge Academy.

This week has been so helpful in giving me a taste of the PR industry and I look forward to returning in August to the education section for the challenges of results week. My experience so far has also helped to settled my concerns a little bit in terms of a career path – PR is definitely something I think I should consider.

Thank you Athene – I will see you again in 2 months!