I’ve really enjoyed my ethics class and have learned so much about advertising and PR. My “oh wow” moment was when we started to learn all the codes of the PRSA code of ethics. I’ve never realized how many there were and the standards they required. It made me proud to know that, unlike most business roles, PR offered a sort of “playbook” to follow.
I understand that not every PR practitioner will follow these codes or even sign up for them, but knowing that my major has one really makes me happy. I’ve grown up knowing what is right or wrong but sometimes it’s hard to decipher what those two things are in business. In this class, with the help of our codes, we were taught how to take case studies and break them down to see their flaws. I really enjoyed this and walked away learning a lot.
Along with this, I learned that signing up with PRSA and agreeing to their codes makes you look more reliable and more professional. Even in business, people should be held to a certain standard and again, it’s nice that PRSA gives us a “playbook” to help us.
My other “oh wow” moment was realizing that, although you can quit a shady job that asks you to do something you don’t agree with, that job might have a reputation for that kind of work and now it’s on your resume. We talked about researching companies and learning if they have a reputation before you take a job with them because it can harness or ruin your career in the end.
There was so much I learned in this class including laws, case studies and advertising rules. I’m proud to go to a school that requires young professionals, like myself, to take an ethics course because I know that everything I learned can and will be taken with me into the business world.
