3 Lessons from My First Three Months as a PR and Marketing apprentice

By Ryan Morah-Wray, 1st Year Apprentice

This blog shares the journey of Ryan Morah‑Wray, a PR and digital marketing apprentice at Aspectus, and his three key lessons from his time so far. From juggling multiple priorities to embracing feedback, and how every experience shapes his understanding of the industry to build a strong foundation for the exciting road ahead.  

3 Lessons from My First Three Months as a PR and Marketing apprentice 

With National Apprenticeship week in full swing, I’ve put together this blog to dive into my experience and what I’ve learnt during my first three months as an apprentice here at Aspectus.  

But before I get into that, I want to briefly explain what apprentices are and why they are beneficial to businesses. Apprentices are individuals who take on a structured training programme that combines on-the-job experience with formal education. Some benefits apprentices give to a company include fresh perspectives and innovation, increased productivity and positive branding.  

Lesson one: Become comfortable with being uncomfortable 

Coming into this apprenticeship everything was completely new to me. I had never heard of search engine optimisation (SEO) or a press release and my experience with Microsoft Teams was close to none.  

The most progress I’ve made during this apprenticeship has come from putting myself in uncomfortable situations. Being uncomfortable is never a nice feeling; however, if we don’t go through this feeling, we will never learn anything new. Even if you think back to when you learnt to ride a bike, you were probably very uncomfortable, falling off a dozen times and wanting to give up. But in the end, you learn it. I feel like this has applied and related a lot during my time at Aspectus.  

There are many times I’ve been given a task that feels daunting or is very confusing and puts me in a feeling of discomfort, and this is completely normal. However, it is the next steps that you take which decide what the outcome will be. You need to be prepared to fail at a task and receive feedback and keep trying until it becomes second nature. You then look back and think why on earth was I so worried about this.  

Lesson two: Ask questions and embrace feedback 

Entering a corporate environment as an 18-year-old can be extremely overwhelming. It’s easy to feel like by asking more senior members questions that you will be bothering or pestering them; however, this is far from reality. In fact, it is the complete opposite.  

Senior team members want to see that you are enthusiastic and eager to learn, and they are not expecting you to know everything. The more questions the better! One thing in particular that was heavily voiced to me when I started at Aspectus was that there is no such thing as a silly question. I can definitely say that some of the questions that I asked during my first few weeks I felt a bit foolish asking, but I was always reassured that it’s essential to ask these questions in order to learn and grow. 

Lesson three: Celebrate small wins 

This apprenticeship has taught me the importance of giving recognition to small milestones. Sometimes it is easy to get lost in the pursuit of long-term goals and we forget to look back and celebrate smaller achievements. These achievements could be as small as developing a new skill or completing a project.  

An achievement I am particularly proud of during my first few months at Aspectus was a presentation that I did alongside my fellow apprentice, Eloise, at Aspectus’ annual company day. As someone who had never presented to more than 5 people in my entire life, I’m sure you could understand my concerns when I was told that we would be doing a 10-minute presentation in front of the whole company. Despite our initial fear, Eloise and I  put together a great presentation that got unbelievable feedback. This gave us such a confidence boost and really improved our public speaking skills. This is just one of many achievements I’ve had so far at Aspectus, and I cannot wait for what more is in store for the future. 

It is safe to say that I am delighted with my decision to do an apprenticeship with Aspectus. It has given me so many different opportunities and I have developed a range of new skills which would not have been possible if I had chosen to go to university.  

For those who are considering applying for an apprenticeship, Here’s the key takeaways from my experience so far: 

• Become comfortable with being uncomfortable – growth comes from being in situations you are not used to.  

• Ask questions and embrace feedback – you will learn most from asking questions, no matter how silly you think they might sound. 

• Celebrate small wins – give recognition to milestones as small as developing a new skill, they are all steps in a positive direction.