Weeks 10 and 11 at Purpol by Intern Emily Marks

Technically, it should be weeks 9, 10 and 11 at Purpol, however, in week nine I used up the holiday I needed to take and thus had nothing to report! It was a nice little break and an opportunity to relax since I haven’t really stopped since finishing university.
It has been a busy past few weeks at Purpol which is why this post comes rather late. I have been working on some projects which for now need to remain secret. Although I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed the project I have been working on. This is a project which let me not only write copy but practice my design skills as well – something I definitely enjoy. However, I would say that this project has taught me that I need to try and refrain from getting carried away – if I had all the time in the world I would have happily made numerous designs, copy and pages for every instance. My desire for perfection is not a new revelation to myself – I don’t like to produce work that hasn’t been completed to my own particular standards and I like my work to be comprehensive and of the best quality I can produce and I won’t stop working on something until it is of a certain standard. This can certainly come in handy, the fact that being a perfectionist got me a first class degree is proof of that, however, in the world of work the need for time management is even greater than during my degree – deadlines approach much faster; a project might only be given a couple of weeks or less rather than a month or sometimes more. This means that I need to start accepting that I have to produce work that is of the best quality possible in the given time frame rather than the best quality of work I could produce if I had all the time I could want. While juggling numerous deadlines in my degree gave me some experience of this, I was always the one who would start my essays at the earliest possible opportunity to give myself the maximum possible time. So my time at Purpol has been invaluable in teaching me that while limitless time is ideal, I must work differentiating between producing the best possible work in the given time frame and producing the best possible work I could ever do.

These past few weeks have also seen the work on whitepapers mostly come to an end. I have just one more to finish editing before I move onto the next stage – editing and proofreading the library of whitepapers that myself and fellow interns have created so that they are ready for use. This will be an interesting task as, since starting at Purpol, I have realised that I really enjoy editing and proofreading copy – I not only enjoy reading what others have created but enjoy the process of finishing and making the final changes to copy before it is ready to go, it’s a very satisfying process!

I have also been involved in some work for a client of Purpol which was certainly interesting and provided a nice change from the heavy going whitepapers. This involved writing new copy for their site as they are wanting to rebrand and update their existing content and site which meant researching not only the business itself to ensure I included all relevant information but also to understand the best practice in the industry to ensure the work I produced would be able to rival competitors in terms of quality and what information it offered. I researched other companies copy as well as general copywriting rules to understand what consumers expect to find on a site before writing my own.

There has also been some exciting news – A client whose bid I was involved with editing won the contract! While this bid came at the beginning of my internship and thus I was involved in more of the editing side than the writing side as I got familiar with the process, it is exciting to think that perhaps my work contributed to the client’s success! It is also excellent for Purpol as we measure our success by our client’s success. This and the fact that this was the first time we have worked with the client makes the success even better!

We also had our last meeting on Thursday which was an opportunity to present our ideas for the secret project and was a nice end to the three months – discussing how far everybody has come and what we have learnt since joining Purpol.

My last piece of news – Denise has been kind enough to extend my contract for another few months until the beginning of December which means that this week is no longer going to be my last week at Purpol! This opportunity means I have the chance to gain some more bid writing experience and will also be able to get involved in another project that Denise has been discussing with me. The past few months have gone so quickly and have provided me with so many new experiences and opportunities to gain skills and knowledge that I wouldn’t have got otherwise and so I am excited to see what the next few months have to offer!