I was an English major for two years at the University of Oregon before I decided to switch my major to public relations. I had always excelled in writing throughout school, and still love it today (though I’m glad I switched to PR where I can still utilize this skill in a way that is more akin to my personal interests). I have a lot of writing experience ranging from analytical essays throughout my time as an English major, as well as writing blurbs from my time taking a blurb writing class, press releases in my PR classes, blog posts, captions for social media posts, and even product descriptions for the website of the company I work for. One of my best skills in writing is adaptability, since I’ve had to write for so many different types of content and purposes ranging from academic to professional, as well as casual stream-of-consciousness and flowery marketing-style copy.
PR Writing:
News/Press Release: For a class I took at the University of Oregon, I had to practice reaching out to media outlets to get news coverage for my potential client. Here is a sample of a news release I had to write for Bloodworks Northwest in an attempt to garner media coverage of their urgent need for blood donations.
Academic Writing:
1) Poem Analysis: “Frijochuelas” by Jasmine Mendez. This is a poem analysis I wrote for a Latinx literature course I took at the University of Oregon. I chose to highlight this piece because though it is an academic writing piece, it discusses important topics of culture and identity that are crucial to talk about in today’s climate. All my academic writing pieces are also pre-Chat GPT so they are all authentic examples of my true, personal writing pieces straight from my own brain.
2) This is an analytical essay I wrote about the usage of surrealism in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. I chose to highlight this piece because during my time as an English major at the University of Oregon, analytical essays like this one were my favorite to write. The process of reading a piece, making a thesis statement about its deeper meaning and finding quotes and literary devices to prove so was truly an exhilarating process for me.
Marketing Writing:
These are all examples of copy I had to write during my time as a marketing intern. In order of appearance, the first is a product description for the product page (PDP) of one of our products on our website, the second displays some captions I wrote for Instagram posts, the third is a description of a collection page (which is a page on our website that displays a specific collection of our products), and last is copy for promotional text messages (SMS) that got sent out to thousands of our text subscribers.
Maya Harney 