Q+A: Rylie Geraci
By Quincey Durham
Rylie Geraci is a student at UGA’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. She wants to pursue a career in Public Relations but also loves writing. She was a part of her high school’s yearbook staff. Rylie was born and raised in Kennesaw, Georgia and wanted to come to UGA for the full college experience including football but also for the in-state tuition. She’s also the PR chair for UGA Heroes an organization to help raise money for kids impacted by HIV and AIDS. She also helps out with photography for the organization and she’s interested in getting into it more. With her PR major, Rylie can do more in the creative industry as well and do more with branding and social media. In her free time, Rylie enjoys listening to Taylor Swift and Kacey Musgraves which are some of her favorite artists. Rylie used to be a big fan of One Direction so naturally, she also loves Harry Styles and his new album a lot. After graduation Rylie hopes to get a job on a public relations team, ideally at a big corporation because it’s more task-oriented instead of the chaos agency PR brings when it comes to dealing with clients and always having to be on call.
Questions:
Quincey DurhamHow did your interest in studying at Grady come about?Rylie GeraciSo I've always been a writer, and in high school, I was on my school's yearbook staff, so I love talking to people getting to write about them and other school event.DurhamWhen we talked on Monday, you said you switched majors from journalism to PR, why did you do that?GeraciSo I do love writing, but I felt like I wanted to do more in the creative industry. So, in public relations I felt like it was a better major because not only would I be able to write but I could work with social media or branding, or stuff like that. And I also have the new media certificate, which also, would help me with whatever I want to do in that pathway.
Durham
What do you like most about majoring in PR?
Geraci
I would have to say the creative aspect and also just like, you can kind of make it your own. So, you can do like digital or press releases or there’s a lot of stuff in PR, and you can kind of figure out what you want to do, and I’m still kind of in the process of that.
Durham
What is the hardest thing about being a Grady student?
Geraci
I would have to say the workload. it’s definitely manageable, but it’s like a lot different than what I was used to.
Durhamlastly, do you have any career goals?GeraciI don't have any concrete ones, but I have realized that I probably want to do more corporate PR then agency PR and that's just because in corporate PR you kind of like have like a specialty task and you kind of have more free time while agency it's like some agencies, you're always on call you're responsible for everything you have multiple clients and I don't know if I would, that might, you know, like that would be a lot for me.
