A Tale of Two Vatican City Interns

Two of our team members, Maria and Taylor, participated in the same college internship during different years before coming to work at Buchanan Public Relations. While their paths eventually converged at BPR, their journeys here were very different. We think their stories can provide helpful advice to those who graduated during the pandemic or are looking to expand their experience while working from home.

The Pope, Public Relations and a Pandemic – Maria Lynn, Assistant Account Executive

While I was not faced with a global pandemic as I was conducting my job search, I did face plenty of other obstacles and moments of uncertainty along the way. I’ve listed some tips based on my own experience, in hopes they will help other young PR professionals navigate this time:

1. Trust your instincts.

When I was young and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my answers varied from being a forensic scientist to living on a farm with all of my favorite animals. I never truly considered a career in communications, let alone public relations, until I got to college. I enrolled in Spanish classes and writing-intensive communications seminars, unaware that I had already begun paving the path to my career. I had made up my mind about going into my second semester without declaring my major and was preparing to apply for a semester abroad in Spain when a friend showed me a flyer for an internship at the Vatican.

I was immediately intimidated by the competitiveness of this opportunity, but I knew I had to trust my gut. Everything about this program had my name written all over it, and in the span of two months, I had changed the blueprint for my college career, declared my communications major, and started the intensive process of applying for this internship. Two months later, I was sitting in a Vatican office with an Italian named Francesco while monitoring Pope Francis’ social media accounts. 

2. Make your internship or job what you want it to be.

The first day of any young professional’s first internship opportunity is nerve-racking, but doing the work in a in a foreign country with an antiquated bureaucracy, in a language that you don’t speak, makes the experience all the more intimidating. That first day, I walked into what would be my workplace for the next four months, with its beautiful view of Via della Conciliazione below, and remember thinking I was in way over my head. Living in Italy and working at the Vatican sounds very glamorous, but there were parts of my internship that I struggled with on a daily basis. I was given hardly any instruction on projects, forcing me to structure my own time and create my own work experience from scratch.

I had to take matters into my own hands, so I made my team aware that I possessed certain skills that would allow me to work on valuable projects. For example, I am bilingual and because I communicated this to my team early on, I was able to transform my internship experience and work with them to translate important documents that now live on the Vatican website. For those of you who are currently struggling with finding opportunities or starting a new job remotely, remember that you should always advocate for yourself and market your strengths. You’re not bragging, you’re showing your team that you will be able to offer something that another candidate cannot.

3. Stay in touch with people in your professional network and build new relationships.

As my time in Italy drew to a close, I had to make a decision about where to intern when I returned. I knew I wanted to work in a PR agency, and although I ended up interning with a different company, my interview with the BPR team stood out in my mind. I remember the Skype interview I had with the team, nervously answering their questions, and laughing as the dogs barked at the most inopportune times (some things never change). The interview went incredibly well, and I kept in touch throughout the rest of my college career.

After graduating from Villanova University, I stepped into a corporate marketing role, which gave me the skills I needed to excel as a writer in the corporate sphere. This first job was both a necessary and positive experience, but I longed to work on the agency side once again. I reached out to my contacts at BPR, and before I knew it, I was headed to the office for a job interview. Networking is important, but it’s also crucial to keep in touch with everyone you meet—you never know when your paths will cross again. The BPR team not only remembered me from our first interview, but also from the times I sent them a note to check-in or ask for friendly advice.  

There will always be roadblocks throughout your career, pandemic or not. Whether you are looking for your first opportunity out of school or need a bit of guidance during this difficult time, you have a chance to reframe any obstacle and make something positive of it. Make it yours and make it count.

From Cappuccinos to Puppuccinos – Taylor Gray, Account Coordinator

As a kid, I was almost too sure of what I wanted to major in and be when I grew up. I became interested in media, communication, and the idea of public relations at a young age. But the way I envisioned that as a young person didn’t come to life exactly as I imagined.

The Rome internship was part of the reason I chose Villanova for my secondary education. It’s the only university in the country that offers the opportunity to be a communications intern in Vatican City or at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) in the U.N.—a possibility that seemed too good to pass up, even as a high school senior. Even though I’m not Roman Catholic (and still somehow wound up at an Augustinian Catholic school) I set my sights on the internship from my first day at Villanova.

As a young PR professional starting out on her journey, the lessons I learned during my internships are still becoming clear to me. But here’s what I’ve learned so far:

1. “Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.”

 It’s also a line from Cinderella in Into the Woods, but I digress. I spent the first two and a half years of my college career falling in love with communication studies and building relationships with the professors in the department. Spending time with them during office hours and learning about what had made previous interns successful helped me show them why I was a good fit for the internship abroad and made it clear  which classes would best prepare me to work in a foreign country for the first time. It was a combination of my connections and merit that helped me lock down the relationship.

From organizational communication to rhetorical studies, I was completely hooked and grateful that I had chosen the right major. When it was time to apply for the internship in the fall of my junior year, I knew the competition would be tough and I also had a few on-campus opportunities that were calling my name. In the end, though, this internship was my first time traveling outside the U.S. After all the years I had spent preparing I couldn’t bear to pass it up.

 2. It’s okay to not know.

Arriving at the Vatican Secretariat of Communication was as Roman Holiday romantic as you can imagine and in those first few weeks, it built my excitement to begin to do the work I was assigned (and that I created for myself). 

It was humbling and quite intimidating to realize I had a great deal to learn about international communication. That stress was not unlike the stress of graduating into a pandemic and staring the future in the face, unsure of what to do with it.

I realized I had a chance to build my network internationally and prepare for a host of exciting new experiences that would influence me for years to come—from analyzing the audience behaviors of Vatican News readers,  to preparing a presentation for journalists covering the Pope’s Meeting on the Protection of Minors.

I was building skills I hadn’t had the chance to in my public relations writing class, doing social analytics, and researching the behaviors of people in six different cultures. The language barrier of working within an office that spoke primarily Italian meant we had to pick up on many non-verbal communication nuances. But the intersection of social media, copywriting, and language deepened my understanding of the international communication that I was helping to facilitate.

Facing the uncertainty of leaving the country for the first time and trying to learn a new language in a workplace made me more confident in my ability to build connections in new workplaces going forward.

When I returned home to the States and started my internship at Buchanan, I built on both my Villanova classes and my experience abroad to prepare for the new skillset I would cultivate at BPR.

Those same connections kept me in touch with Buchanan for the year after I completed my internship. I came to the office for a few events – even the office Christmas party. I stayed in touch with the office staff and kept them up to date on my senior year achievements before I headed home in mid-March with my college career unfinished.

Let’s not sugar-coat it: the uncertainty of looking out on the world without any idea of what to do next, or how to get there, is terrifying. But so was arriving in a country where I didn’t speak the language. So was going to college in general. We have faced uncertainty before, and we will again. But if you are like me— freshly graduated and looking at a world that is unlike the one you expected—I’m here to tell you that we’re going to figure it out.

Staring at LinkedIn, Handshake, and Zip Recruiter and calling on every possible connection in your network is frustrating. But something will work out, even if (like most of my senior year) it may not come in the time or the way you expect.