The College Experience Goes Beyond The Classroom

By Eliza Hallabeck

Alexandra Isaacs was afraid she would be walking into something similar to the movie The Devil Wears Prada, but she soon found out that her new internship was something else. She spent her summer interning for Devries Public Relations in Manhattan, and she said the summer may have turned her into a New Yorker.

Alexandra will be a junior this fall at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, and during her internship at Devries, she said she was the youngest intern there.

“Up until this point in my life I have worked at camps,” said Alexandra. She said she has also done other internships during her college career, but this one was on a larger scale.

She is working on a double major at the university in both communications and political science, but Alexandra is also focusing on journalism and public relations as concentrations.

In March she applied for the internship position at Devries Public Relations because she knew someone who worked for the company. Her friend told her that the company was working on some amazing things, and Alexandra said she got excited.

“I’ve never had a big internship before,” said Alexandra.

When she went shopping for her clothes, a friend who works in the public relations field helped her, and the friend told her it would be very much like the movie The Devil Wears Prada. Alexandra said she was terrified. The movie is about a young journalist who goes to work for a high profile fashion magazine, and within the first couple minutes of the film, she realizes she does not fit into the world of high fashion.

During her internship, Alexandra said, she realized that the position was like the movie, but it was also different.

“It was very cutthroat, and everyone was serious,” said Alexandra. “But at the same time everyone was nice.”

As a student, she said, she has taken public relations classes before, but her experience as an intern was nothing like what she had gone through in class.

“[The internship] was so detailed, instead of just fixing up a website,” said Alexandra.

During one of her classes in public relations she and her classmates had to design a website for a company, but her internship was much more work.

“I did a lot of research,” said Alexandra. Much of the research that she completed was sent to the higher departments in the company, and everything she worked on went to helping to develop or market an idea.

Alexandra explained that the company designed a reusable water bottle before she went to work there, and part of her internship included doing research on the benefits to having a reusable bottle. She said she was shocked with some of the information she found on the topic.

There is a chemical, bisphenol A (BPA), that is found in water bottles, Alexandra said, and this chemical makes the bottles only usable for one time. BPA is released when plastic containers, such as water bottles, food containers, and baby bottles, are heated and cooled down. In large doses, BPA mimics the effects of estrogen, which it puts the person at greater risk of developing uterine fibroids, breast cancer, decreased sperm counts, and prostate cancer, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health Services.

In a report printed in April, the National Toxicology Program and the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction Expert Panel on Bisphenol A released a study that concluded there are some concerns for neural and behavioral effects in fetuses, infants, and children at the current amount of human exposure.

To reduce exposure to BPA, according to the National Institute of Environmental Health, limiting the use of plastic containers that contain BPA (which normally have a number 7 printed on the bottom), the use of canned foods and not using plastic containers in microwaves can help to control the amount of exposure of the chemical.

Alexandra said she found this information incredibly interesting to study, and all of her research was passed on to the higher executives at Devries Public Relations.

She said she also pitched stories to the media about the reusable plastic bottle and worked with sponsors of the products to get the information out to the public.

“It was very hard,” said Alexandra. “I have never had this much stress in my life.”

The entire process was a good learning experience, said Alexandra. She said she had to work with a lot of people and the internship showed her things she could never learn in the classroom.

“It gave me a better idea about what I want to do with my life,” said Alexandra.

She said being out in the field that she wants to go into really showed her how to obtain her goal, and living in New York for the summer helped her understand what it is like to live in the city.

“I think I became a real New Yorker,” said Alexandra. “I hated slow walkers by the end of the summer.”