Over the summer of 2019, I found a YouTuber named Carrie Carrollo who at the time worked at Popsugar. In one of her videos, she spoke about when she began her business, and she mentioned how she was in Her Campus at the school that she graduated from. She then went on to talk about how Her Campus was a very large brand that many schools all over the country were a part of. One Google search later and I was sending an email to the Campus Correspondents to see if I could be part of this amazing organization I had only just learned about.Â
A few weeks later, applications went live, and I applied to be on the Editorial Team. A few weeks after that, I was on a phone interview with one of the Senior Editors talking about my ideas and how I thought I could add to the team. Finally, right before school started, I got an email from Her Campus at UCLA congratulating me on my acceptance as a Feature Writer for the Editorial Team.
Never ever in my entire life had I been given the opportunity to write for an organization where others would be able to read my work. It made me feel so free and it allowed me to really start to tell my stories or give tips about things like skincare and makeup. I got to talk about the things that made me happy.
One of the biggest things that Her Campus has taught me over the course of this year is that I was gatekeeping myself. For almost all of my life, I wasn’t allowing myself to write because I was so scared that people would think it was bad, or that I would get judged for the articles that I wrote.
Writing for Her Campus gave me so much confidence in myself, especially when later on in the year, something that I wrote got produced on stage by the UCLA V-Day Coalition. This organization allowed for me to express myself in words like never before. The weekly calender pushed me to keep writing, even when I didn’t really have any solid ideas, because I felt like I would be letting myself down if I missed a week.
Not only that, but Her Campus also allowed for me to dive deeper into content creation whenever I wrote an article that would have my own original images in it. I was able to gain some confidence in new skills, like taking product shots and just general pictures to be used in my articles.Â
When I think back to the 25+ articles that I have written this past year, I swell with so much love, joy and thankfulness for the organization that played a large part in my senior year. I was able to meet so many amazing women through this organization that work hard, inspire and help me. There is a special place in my heart for Her Campus and the UCLA chapter especially, and this experience has meant so much to me.Â