Girl Scouts Across America

By Brittany Robinson

For my interview, I decided to talk to an old friend Catherine Wagner. Catherine works for the Girls Scouts Club in Norman, Oklahoma.

Catherine decided she wanted

 to work in public relations in college when she determined she wanted to work in a writing field. "English was too intense for me," Catherine said. She felt that the daily interactions with people in the public relations field was the turning point in her choosing it as her major.

Catherine felt pretty prepared for her job when she go

t hired on almost a year ago as a full-time employee. "You can never know everything," Catherine said. She was an intern for the Girl Scouts before getting hired on, but is still learning new things everyday. Catherine was surprised when she found that people were not always out to get her in public relations as she was taught through her studies at Gaylord. "Don't get me wrong, people are always trying to catch you with your pants down, but I was as prepared as I c

ould have expected," Catherine said.

Catherine says that everyday is a new challenge in public relations. She has to learn how to work a website with no prior experience. Catherine reflected her first couple of months at her new position and found that she was caught a little bit off guard by "angry people and the press who are digging for a story." Another thing that she did not expect was for the people who are lazy and do not do their job. "I just assumed that everyone works like me in that they work hard and play hard, I have met some people who do not work hard and still play hard," Catherine said. She described trying to get them to do their work like "pulling teeth."

Catherine's daily work life begins with reading about six different newspapers a day. Emails and phone calls take up most of the morning. Updating the website all day is one of her big and daily tasks as well. Catherine says she

 usually writes about four press releases a week and will set up meetings with the press once a week that she will attend alone or with her boss. "I am usually pretty busy although I cannot recall what else would be routine for me," Catherine said.

Catherine's advice for public relations students is to learn as much as you can about anything online. "We use Facebook, Twitter and Google feeds for a lot of publicity," Catherine said. Most importantly, however, she advices that you work on people skills in how to properly manage and deal with angry people because she did not consider herself well versed in the area.