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For college basketball fans, it’s officially their favorite time of year…their Christmas…their reason for watching NCAA games all season. It’s finally March Madness. While many PAN employees are Orange alumnus cheering for Syracuse to take the title, there is one thing we can all agree on: there are key learnings we can glean from March Madness as PR professionals. 

Marissa Fellows - Account Supervisor

Tell us three fun facts about yourself. 

 1) I blew up my toilet with a Molotov Cocktail (aka  hairdryer) …it was a total freak accident, I swear!

 2) I fell partially down a waterfall last summer

 3) I once saw Ron Howard and Tom Hanks filming  Angels and Demons while in Italy

Similar to the flow of my class last year, this year’s course often left me engrossed in conversations with my students about current trending events. While they can sometimes get heated, open conversations always serve as a great learning opportunity.

Throughout the course of this semester, I’ve been paying particular attention to the differences between my students this year compared to those from last year. As I mentioned in my first post of this series, I am teaching a class I haven’t taught in three years. I’m used to teaching graduating seniors, accustomed to their demeanor and questions, their curiosity about life and what’s next. I often found myself swept up in all of their anticipation and anxiety about the “real world.”

And we are back! Welcome to all of the new readers and hello again to the familiar faces. For those of you who are new, and maybe stumbled upon this post while you were perusing our prSPEAK blog, let me take this opportunity to explain what this blog series is and what we explore. For the past 13 years, I have been teaching at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. To me, it is something I look forward to every year. From meeting new students to dissecting the latest current event, I always end the semester with more knowledge than when I started, and a greater appreciation for the younger generation.