As a non PR major, I am unsure if my future career will be in the field of personal relations or not. Yet, this past week has taught me more about the bailiwick of PR and corporate social responsibility than I have learned in my entire life. For a funny sidenote, a lady that I met on the plane ride back attempted to guess my major in college after having a lengthy conversation and she guessed PR! What I can take away from this week being amongst my mostly personal relations major’s classmates and being in business meetings where PR and sustainability seemed to be at the forefront of each presentation, I can confidently say that my acknowledgement towards PR as an essential business practice has been brought to life.

I was happy to able to hear from a wide variety of different businesses such as smaller firms like Alice PR or much bigger and global scale businesses like William Fry. I thought that the diversity amongst the different companies was a great insight into how differently yet similarly these companies were run. It was truly inspiring to hear each different companies devotion to ethical business practices, because, so many times you read about the evil and corruption that many major businesses take part in. It was refreshing to hear that these companies were devoted to sustainable business practices and were on board with excluding clients or suppliers if they were unable to meet/match their sustainable business model.

A certain “business trip” that we went on, which did not really feel business oriented at all was our class trip to Airfield Estate. I become completely engaged into the estate when learning about the rich history the land was apart of and felt necessarily engaged when learning of the daughters of the late family that once owned the property. It seems as if the estate is still working in the lines of the mission statement that was set by the two selfless sisters whom left the land to the city. This particular trip was a reminder to me that whatever I end up doing professionally, I want to feel proud of what the companies goal and mission is. I would want to be apart of something that contributes to the benefit of the community it is serving and the workers it is employing.