Mel Snyder Reflection

To be quite honest, my biggest takeaway from Mel’s piece was a sense of gratitude for the fact that I have minors in Marketing and Health, Medicine and Society.

While I came to Lehigh knowing that I would take the Journalism and Marketing route, I decided halfway through my sophomore year to add a minor in HMS given my own personal interests in health and wellness, which there’s no need to elaborate on that further as we all know my passions for why.

I have taken a swath of courses in the public health realm as well as the health communications realm, but I never thought about honing in on those topics in the clinical sense before, and definitely hadn’t thought of using any entrepreneurial skills in that sector of the health field. In fact, I really hadn’t thought about how the two overlapped until reading this.
I appreciate the need for nearly all health-based companies and franchises to have strong communications and overarching campaigns as the pandemic is still far from over. Additionally, the health field is one in which patients and consumers need an ultra-trusting relationship with their providers, whichever kind of providers they may be.

This reading also made me come to appreciate how to sell myself as an expert communicator. While I truly believe I am a journalist at heart, I am a creator to my core. I’ve always loved writing opinion pieces for The Brown and White, however, I have always known I don’t wish for a career in strictly the editorial realm. In past internship experiences I’ve been able to combine my skillset both from the marketing, strategic communications, editorial and visually creative sides of me to create real-world campaigns for clients at the two public relations firms I’ve worked for.

While some in the course may have left reading the article relatively bleak, I left feeling somewhat confident that I not only have the skills of an entrepreneurial journalist, I also have a few areas of “expertise” in which these skills can bolster my work in a future professional role. If anything this reading showed me that while there is no designated path toward media entrepreneurial success, I do in fact possess the skills to lead me towards a role in health communication in whichever capacity the road may take me.