Sorrel Nixon is currently in her third year studying international business at the University of Plymouth. It is a requirement of her course that she spend a year as an intern in the workplace and she secured a 10-month internship with PR agency Mulberry where she will divide her time between the agency’s Chicago, London, Melbourne and Singapore offices.

At present she is in the second of a three-month stint at the Mulberry London office and is looking forward to the warmer Australian summer weather in Melbourne next.

My Day
 

7.00am: My alarm wakes me up – very unwelcome – I ignore it for a further 20 minutes.

8.15am: Leave my house in Hammersmith and walk to the station.

8.30am: Board the District Line train to Waterloo.

9.05am: Arrive at Waterloo and grab a bottle of Tropicana for breakfast.

9.15am: Arrive at the London office. There are 12 of us in the London office, so we each have a little morning catch up before we start working. I tidy up yesterday’s mess and enjoy a cup of tea at my desk.

9.28am: Contrary to what I hear from interns at other London agencies, I am not asked to make the teas and coffee here, but when there is an urgent need for some chocolate biscuits to sweeten a new business presentation about to start, I show initiative and make it to the corner shop and back in a new personal best.

9.40am: Call Paul Manser in the Mulberry Melbourne office to discuss some of the work I’ll be doing when I arrive in March. He also needs me to liaise with some of the English media on behalf of one of the agency’s Australian clients.

10.00am: I fire a quick email off to my future manager in the Singapore office to request some further information on one of the clients I’ll be working with while I’m there in June and July. Owing to the time difference and even though they tend to work longer hours in Singapore than London, it’s hard to communicate whilst we are both in the office and fresh. He gives me a call so we can talk in more detail.

10.20am: After having a briefing from one of my colleagues about one of our major heating and energy-efficiency clients, I’m now responsible for overseeing a small part of its website redevelopment and a little fine-tuning and further testing is required before the site goes live next week.

10.45am: Call journalists to “gently persuade” them into attending meetings with one of our clients at a tradeshow taking place later this month in New York.

11.05am: I’m given the chance to write a press release for a client, giving tips to prevent the spread of flu.

12.30pm: Have lunch with my work colleagues in our meeting room, discussing everything from work, music, football, and why I only have a bag of Maltesers for lunch.

1.30pm: Back to work. I am briefed on one of our other clients and need to come up with a name for its new product range. This appeals to me, and within minutes I have come up with of a number of different names – some of which I’m even happy to share with my colleagues. After some thought, I provide an explanation for each of them.

2.40pm: I’ve been asked to write the first draft of a press release for a luxury hotel company based in Italy. Just looking at the photos of the place is inspiring, making it very easy to write about. This press release is to be prepared for another one of our major technology clients which Mulberry represents on four different continents

3.45pm: One of my colleagues briefs me on how to use Hootesuite, an easy way to manage tweets for our different clients, and asks me to find relevant news and information relating to our biggest client. I have to do this for the whole month, so it’s quite challenging finding 30 interesting facts and bits of news. Once I find all of these, I carefully schedule the tweets, making sure they are for the correct date, time and, most importantly, for the right client.

4.40pm: With a few spare moments after a fairly hectic day so far, I am able to catch up with the girls in the Chicago office – my colleagues for the last three months of last year. I find out how the projects that I worked on are going and what’s new with the clients that I worked with, and catch up on any of the latest gossip.

5.10pm: I prepare some teas and coffees for my colleagues, ready for the meeting that has been arranged for ten minutes time.

5.20pm: A few of the London Mulberries and I meet in the meeting room to brainstorm some ideas for a social media competition for one of our clients who are launching a new product. After half an hour, lots of ideas and potential competition names have been batted around and committed to paper.

5.50pm: Before I leave the office, I’m quickly briefed on the research project that I’ll be working on when I get into the office in the morning by one of my colleagues, and I check my emails for the final time of the day.

6.15pm: I leave the office and set off to tackle the crowds at Waterloo Station.

6.55pm: I arrive back at Hammersmith and go and grab some bits and pieces for tomorrow’s lunch at the supermarket – I can’t survive another day fuelled only by Maltesers. After leaving the station, I come face to face with Nando’s … and I can’t resist. I pick up tonight’s dinner, along with a Nutella and banana crepe from a French creperie.

7.30pm: After a busy day at work, I get back to my home in Hammersmith and sit down with my dinner just in time for the soaps to start.

8.30pm: I head upstairs to continue with my university project and to finish off some documents that I need to post on my way to work tomorrow morning.

10.45pm: I prepare my stuff for tomorrow before I get in to bed and lose myself in a book by my favourite author, David Nicholls. Night night.