If you'd told a thirteen year old me that I'd be attending Ball State University studying public relations, I'd laugh and say, "What even is public relations?" PR was never part of my plan. I had other dreams I was more interested in achieving. At one point, it was a corporate lawyer. Then I realized I'd never be happy doing that. I settled on Journalism. Why not? I'd always loved writing. It was a passion of mine, so it seemed to be the perfect career choice.

A journalism workshop at my current university towards the end of my senior year of high school changed me. My whole newspaper team attended this event every year. We got to attend these workshops through out the day, picking and choosing the ones we wanted to attend.

At this point, I'd already been accepted to Ball State University and was declared as a double major in journalism and telecommunication. For the fun of it, I decided to attend a "what is public relations" workshop with my friend who was interested in the major.

That workshop changed my life. I remember being pretty inspired. It was this amazing presentation that had me doubting if I wanted to be a journalist anymore. After the interview, my friend approached the speaker, who was a professor here, and I tagged along. Basically, we ended up scheduling a day to shadow a public relation student.

We spent that day hanging out with a junior in the program, who became sort of a a mentor to me in a way. We sat in on a campaign class that I enjoyed a lot. I wanted to be part of the planning of these events and campaign. They were making a difference to their clients. The concept was nice.

I officially changed my major to public relations during my summer orientation for the school. It's not been perfect. I've had some doubts about staying in the major. My beginner classes didn't interest me too much. So, I thought about changing to something else. I actually reached out to that student mentor I had met the previous year for some encouragement, which helped. She gave me a good piece of advice to wait to make a choice until I've gotten into more public relations focused classes.

I'm now a second year public relations major. I've declared a concentration in event planning and management since I love the idea of setting up events and managing projects. I am an account coordinator for Cardinal Communications where I work with real world clients in the Muncie area. Recently, I got accepted into an immersive learning class where I will be working side by side with a real public relations firm.

I haven't decided exactly what I want to do with public relations right after college. But I have some ideas. I've thought about working at a firm for the first few years. I also have a high interest in working public relations for Disney or their parks.

Either way, I am currently loving what I do. I like detailing out campaigns and coming up with fresh ideas for clients. I'm excited to take more public relations centered classes. It'll be interesting to see where public relations takes me in life.