Day 2 of PRSSANC

Saturday:

We woke up Saturday morning excited. Why you might ask? FREE FOOD. We put on our professional look and headed downstairs to find the continental breakfast. After finding our new friends from Michigan, we sat together enjoyed our food and talked about what we were expecting from the sessions that day. We also talked about roll call and what the other chapters were doing; we were still trying to find an ending to ours. CLOCK'S TICKING PEOPLE!!

After breakfast we headed to the regional ballroom for the keynote speaker. Her name is Pam Jenkins and she is the president of Powell Tate. She talked for about 45 minutes. She went through her background and how she got where she is today. She offered advice for us eager students in the audience. We feverishly wrote down words that she said; and in some cases we tweeted them. Someone said that PR is the only major where it is not considered rude to be on your phone while at work, or in this case at a conference/meeting. And it's so true. We are masters of multitasking and you will never find us without our phones. It's part of the industry, and we like it that way.

Roll call was up next and because Bloomsburg starts with a "B" we knew we were going to be one of the first groups to go. The National President, who is a student at a college I forget the name of, simply called each university in alphabetical order. When your school is called you stand and do your roll call chant/ song/ whatever you came up with. Actually, I should note that the national board did theirs first. They reworded the lyrics to Iggy Azeala's song "Fancy"- it was hysterical. Roll call took over an hour with all of the chapters that were present.

Our's was, "We're from BloomU and we're here to stay, we love PR gonna do it all day. We're Huskies and we know, and we ain't afraid to show it!"

After that we grabbed some lunch at a local spot, not far from the hotel with some of our new friends.

Finally, it was time for our first professionally lead session. We chose to go to the "First Job Survival Guide" seminar. We got advice on everything from our resumes, interview tips, LinkedIn, networking, and a ton of other useful information. Overall, it was a VERY insightful and useful session that I am glad I went to.

Next up was, "A Different Kind of Social: Exploring Social Marketing." This session started out well but I lost in interest part of the way through. It was a lot of repetitive information. However, I definitely learned something from each session I went to, no matter how much or how little I liked the presentation. I was a little disappointed with this one because it was presented by a big PR agency, Ketchum.  Like the rest of the crowds in both of these sessions, I was quickly writing notes and tweeting statements they made that I thought were useful or funny or important; #PRSSANC.

The last session wasn't one that I particularly NEEDED to go to, but my friend really wanted to go so I  went with her. Nicole Garner, from the Garner Circle Inc. was one of two presenters on the topic of Entertainment PR. My friend, Kat, had talked her up and was literally SO excited to see her. It was a good presentation...I guess. Honestly all she really seemed to care about was promoting her book and getting people to buy it. Her main concern was not on helping us become more aware of the subject, or how to help us. There was only time for 1 student question at the end of the session. We were disappointed, as well as a number of other students.

The learning was over for today, or so we thought.

We went out to dinner at a new placed in Dupont Circle, Washington D.C called Ripple. Her mom and aunt came and picked us up at the hotel and took us to dinner. This was an area of D.C that I had never seen before. It wasn't the typical tourist area, though it really was not that far from places such as the White House or the Smithsonian Museums. The food was delicious and the area was amazing. I would describe it as a cleaner, better smelling, nice version of New York City. The most useful thing I learned was that I could see myself living or working there in the future. I fell in love with the area, something I never saw coming.