Change Needs Time

The PR industry is broadly white and middle class. The first reason is that people from other backgrounds are always encouraged by their parents to study business, accounting, or engineering as those majors do not need professional writing skills. There are many job opportunities in such fields. However, PR industry requires the perfect oral skill and the writing intelligence. Since public relations comes from journalists, it is difficult for people whose first languages are not English to become professionals in writing qualified articles. Second, there are a giant culture gap between people from foreign countries and Americans. Since they do not share the same values and norms, it is easy to have conflicts and misunderstandings. Therefore, when asking the guest speakers the possibility that international students find jobs in America, they answered that it is almost impossible for companies to hire international students due to culture differences and the sponsorship. I think Syracuse University has been actively recruiting diversity in the student body, especially Newhouse. There are many Chinese students majored in Public Relations in Newhouse, which is totally different from the situation in my high school. Four years ago, I went high school in Rumford, Maine, where there was no diversity. I was the only Asian, so everyone wanted to make friends with me. I felt Americans were warm hearted. I was so impressed at that time. However, when I came to Syracuse, I lost the special treatment because there are too many Chinese students here. Sometimes, I felt Americans are cold in Syracuse because they do not care about thoughts of international students. For instance, when doing group work together, they tend to ignore words from Chinese students because Chinese students sometimes cannot express their ideas clearly. There are still nice Americans who are trying to learn about different cultures and accept different opinions. However, in the work place, nobody has time to listen to you if you are weak of expressing. I believe change needs time. I can understand why it is hard to accept diversities, but I think diversity is important in PR industry in the future because of globalization.