Meet our co-president, Jasmine! She is in her fourth year here at UVic, taking a double major in Computer Science and Psychology. Jasmine is from Richmond, B.C., but moved to Victoria because UVic offered her program and excellent scholarship opportunities. It also gave her the perfect amount of freedom without being too far away from her family. In the past four years she has become an integral member of the UVic community!
Jasmine joined Her Campus when the UVic chapter re-launched in March of 2014. She started as a writer and eventually took on the position of Events Director, where she organized Her Campus at UVic’s first ever Headshot Event, before becoming a Campus Correspondent (president) this year. Since she joined Her Campus, she feels like the club has grown exponentially. She has seen the membership and readership increase, the quality of the content improve and the bonds between members grow stronger. “We are such a close group of friends, as well as members of Her Campus at UVic,” she says. For Jasmine, this is important because it creates an environment where everyone is comfortable with each other and that makes for better brainstorm sessions and creates a more cohesive and fun group!
At Her Campus at UVic, Jasmine shares the Campus Correspondent role with Ellen Harrison. The iconic duo has made an amazing team this year. According to Jasmine, the secret to their success is actually their different interests. “We mesh so perfectly because our interests exactly balance the others,” Jasmine says. To put names to it, Ellen works as the Editor-in-Chief and Jasmine is the President. Jasmine’s role includes making a yearly calendar, organizing meetings, responding to emails, managing and supporting the executive team and any other correspondence that is necessary. For Jasmine, sometimes the hardest part of the job is just staying on top of everything, as she is constantly receiving email from several different avenues at all times. It is important that she is very organized and is always planning for things well in advance.
Being a part of Her Campus has been an amazing experience for Jasmine. She loves that it gives writers a lot of freedom and that the chapters are able to manage themselves (with guidance). She also loves that it gives female (and other) students at UVic a platform where they can publish their own original work, stories, and challenges. Jasmine absolutely loves reading the Victoria chapter’s content because she feels that it is the best it has ever been and that it is continuing to get better! Jasmine’s favourite articles to write are informative articles about UVic and Victoria, because she gives tours on campus and loves to be able to answer peoples’ questions. Her Campus has provided Jasmine with excellent experiences, skills and some of her best friends! She is also pretty proud of how much better she has gotten at doing makeup because of the magazine. Going forward, she hopes that Her Campus at UVic will get bigger and better each year. She hopes that all of the members will continue having fun and creating content that they are proud of, and that the magazine’s events and following will increase so that the amazing work of the writers is seen!
On top of all the work that she does for Her Campus, Jasmine is extremely active in other areas of the UVic community as well! She gives tours to incoming and prospective UVic students and partakes in panels and recruitment ventures for UVic. This includes New Student Welcome in September each year. She also works in the Ticket Centre in the University Centre and is a Research Assistant and Peer Tutor in the Psychology Department. As a Student Ambassador, she also sits on the Alumni Association Board of Directors as the student representative. If that wasn’t enough, she is also part of the Centre for Autism Research Technology and Education (CARTE) as part of their tech and outreach teams. In this position, she has helped to develop iPad and desktop applications for children on the Autism Spectrum. Managing all of these responsibilities means that Jasmine has to be super organized. Her advice for people who want to be more organized is to keep a calendar. Jasmine brings a physical day planner everywhere and it dictates her entire life. Even though it can be tough to keep up with a planner, she believes that every busy person needs one. Jasmine likes to be constantly working, or at a “comfortable level of busy,” as she calls it, but she still leaves time to have fun and relax. In her spare time, she loves watching Riverdale on Netflix, napping, and going out for food with her friends. “I would try a new restaurant or cuisine every day if I could. Just chatting with friends over food is always an amazing time.”
Jasmine has many goals for the future. For the short term, she hopes to find a graduate program that she loves. She is overwhelmed, but extremely excited about all of possibilities. In the long term, she just hopes to be doing something that she loves, thriving, achieving and being authentic to herself. “I just want to be killing it in my 30s. People think I have it all together now, imagine how good I’ll be in my 30s.” Jasmine tries to adhere to the Latin words “valens” and “virago,” which, respectively, mean “healthy and strong” and “a strong, brave, or warlike woman who demonstrates exemplary and heroic qualities.” In combination, those words to her mean a woman who is strong, and not afraid of calling the shots. She is creative, thriving and authentic to everything she is and wants to be. Her intelligence and ambition pave her path and take her farther than she could ever imagine.
It is pretty clear that Jasmine is goals! She is also the sweetest and funniest person you will ever meet, so if you ever see her around campus, be sure to say hi!