Student Testimonial: Mohammad Raza, Class of ’19

by Mohammad Raza

It was a frustrating and late night at the end of my second to last year in university, with a double major almost in hand but no exit strategy in sight, when my best friend changed my life with a simple suggestion: “Why don’t you see if college might be the way to go?”

After a few hours of searching deep into that night, we found Centennial College’s Public Relations and Corporate Communications Post-Graduate program. From the outside it looked like the perfect marriage of the skills I had gained during my longer than I’d like to admit tenure at university with the practical skills that the professional world was looking for. On the other side of the program, it’s been exactly what it promised and yet so much more.

Communications is thankfully a very diverse and engaging field that calls on talents from multiple skill-sets and Centennial’s program reflected that diversity, giving my classmates and I a safe ecosystem to test the waters, engage our skills, discover our passions, and understand exactly what kind of communicators we want to be.

Multiple classes grounded in theory helped us understand the expectations from the professional world, develop a foundational knowledge base in business and taught us the basics of communications management to build our expertise from.

Certain classes focused on the fundamentals of visual communications and gave us the time and resources to use various creative and design programs to hone our new skills and develop an understanding of how to combine messages with visual aids, to effectively communicate to any number of audiences.

Other classes focused on building interactions with real world clients and understanding client expectations, including how to manage them, while other classes taught us how to sharpen our presentation skills and become confident and capable public speakers.

Writing has always been a passion for me and the PR program taught me how big and wide the world of writing can be and the powerful impact you can have by conveying the right message to the right person. Centennial’s writing and copy-editing classes were the equivalent of a Rosetta Stone which helped me understand the wealth of abilities and possibilities for a communicator who writes passionately and effectively.

While the practical skills and experiences I acquired are invaluable, much like the communications field, the relationships I built here are my most valuable asset. The industry professionals who teach us so passionately that you forget they have lives outside of the classroom are the backbone of the program. They listen to you; they understand what kind of communicator you want to be and then they do their best to guide you to the right path. Along with my professors, the classmates that I struggled, laughed, fought and achieved alongside with are the most precious things for me to look back on as I prepare to enter the real world.

Anyone who has the will to work hard, to be comfortable outside their comfort zone, to push their limits and to make relationships with gems that I consider life-long friends and mentors should want to be at the Story Arts Centre’s PR program, where parking is only slightly difficult to find.