A Practical Reality
The Search
I am currently wrapping up my second year in Advertising and Marketing Communications at St Lawrence College. During the past two years, my classmates and I have learned various skills and strategies through what felt like endless assignments. I am fortunate enough to have enrolled in a program that actually excites and incites my passion. However, I am only human, and even I can only “practice” for so long before itching to actually apply my knowledge in the “real world”.
My first event while on placement with Improbable Escapes. Reaching out to the students at Queen's University!
I had toyed with the idea of doing my placement with Improbable Escapes(IE) during the first semester of the 2016-2017 year. My class was very fortunate to have IE as a client for our Direct Marketing course. After the presentations, it seemed as though someone else had already swooped in and snatched away the placement position from me. I took this as a sign that my placement’s destiny lay somewhere else. As the final day to choose my placement drew near, panic started to set in. I still had no idea what I wanted to do in the marketing industry, or who with! This is when Improbable Escapes’ co-founder, Melissa Eapen came in and (unbeknownst to her) saved my butt.
““Fake it til you make it””
The Moment I Didn't Know I Was Waiting For
She was speaking at an innovation boot camp called CUSP, an event put on by St Lawrence College one weekend in February through Enactus SLC. She spoke of her own journey and the decisions and mindset it took for her to get where she is today. “Fake it til you make it”, she said at one point during her time at the podium. I had heard the expression said many, many times before but it had always seemed sort of... Cliche to me. Hearing Melissa say this, and then go on to explain how her and Emma (IE’s other marvelous co-founder) have opened a retail business (The Kingston Collective) and were about to open yet ANOTHER business (Hipstory Tours), well the phrase actually made sense. It’s not about being fake or pretending to be someone else, it’s about literally putting the best version of yourself forward until you truly accept the best version of yourself. Needless to say, I knew that I had to connect to IE in some way or another. Placement or not, there was a lot for me to learn from them. I approached her and with the luck of the gods, the position was still open.
Im-PAWS-ible Escapes Day was one of the events I had the pleasure of planning while on placement with Improbable Escapes. A fundraiser for the Kingston Humane Society in partnership with Bring Oakley Home. The event is happening on June 8th.
The Interview
During the interview, I couldn’t keep my blabbering mouth shut, at one point we were talking about cats. In the moment, all I could think was “there’s no way they are going to take me, how could my all-over-the-map brain and almost alarmingly high-energy be an asset to their marketing team”. I pushed on through the interview trying not to let my nerves show TOO much (the nonstop talking probably gave it away though). But guess what? They didn’t see any of the negative stuff I was seeing. That’s right, I scored a placement exactly where I wanted to be.
To Be Continued...
That's all for now, read Part 2 here!
Drae
Another event I was able to attend as part of the Improbable Escapes Team was the Learning Connections Conference at St. Lawrence College. Running the 10 minute pop-up escape game, Jail Cell and educating people on escape rooms!