There is a common belief that students pursuing a communications major can coast through college without much work. Those in accounting majors or biology majors often think communications majors spend all day doing just that, communicating with their friends. Our assignments are assumed to be just talking and chatting about our daily lives.
This could not be farther from the truth. Communications majors are some of the busiest people I know. And as a communications major myself, I can tell you that I do not spend my whole day just talking and chatting. I do a lot, and so do many communications majors who take their education seriously.
As a journalism major, I have five different internships on top of a full class load to complete my major and two minors. I write for PolitiFact NY, Her Campus (obviously), a local newspaper in Ellicottville, New York, and a local online news source, Tapinto Greater Olean. I am also a copywriter for our school’s section of the American Advertising Federation (AAF). These are just the obligations I have within the communications school.
For each of these internships, I have deadlines and guides to meet and follow. For The Villager newspaper, the paper located in Ellicottville, each week I interview a new person and write a new story for that week’s edition of the paper. Getting in touch with people can be difficult and take several days. Collecting information and conducting research can take a while as well.
In addition to writing each week for Her Campus, I manage the brand deals for our chapter. Coordinating brand deals includes applying for deals, planning for distribution of products, and creating content that features our members using the products. This on top of weekly writing can be stressful.
AAF is one of the most demanding things I am a part of. In addition to attending class twice a week, our creative department, made up of copywriters and art directors, meets outside of class to work on print ads and write commercial scripts. This can take a lot of time starting from the brainstorming process and ending with rewriting and revising the most intricate details.
Tapinto Greater Olean is a great internship. It allows me the opportunity to connect with people in our community. However, a lot of stories require in-person interaction which can take a large chunk out of my day. These stories often have a quick turnaround period and need to be written and published soon after I report on them.
PolitiFact is another demanding internship. These stories revolve around fact-checking statements of public officials. This requires a lot of research ahead of time so our interview questions and, later, our articles can be well written and thorough. Reaching out to busy public officials can be frustrating because you may end up waiting a long time before you hear back from them. This postpones the writing of your article.
I consider myself involved and busy, but there are many communication majors who are much busier and are involved in many more clubs or groups. From the outside, being a communication major may look easy, but when you consider heavy course loads and the requirement of 400 internship hours before graduation, it starts to look a bit more difficult.
Communication majors have it anything but easy.