In my first semester here at Xavier I had to take a first-year seminar course just like every other first-year student. There is a range of topics in the hopes of finding one every student would like.
The course I ended up taking was called “Reading Youtube” and it centred around all things, you guess it, Youtube. I took this class simply because I loved everything Youtube when I was in junior high and kept up with it during high school. When I heard I could get college credit for my junior high obsession, I jumped on it right away (and my mom always said I was wasting my time watching all that Youtube).
The class was actually pretty cool and i quite enjoyed getting to talk about something I already knew so much about. When the end of the semester came, I knew it was time for the final project that all of the semester had me working up to: creating our own video.
When I was first working on the project, I decided to film a “DIY Christmas Gifts for Friends” video. After buying all the supplies and a failure in my filming attempts, I decided to put that project on the back burner until after Thanksgiving break. For Thanksgiving I was going to Michigan with my friend (who was also in the Youtube class) because I couldn’t fly home for the week. I decided that on our week long adventure i would film us just to see if anything would come from it. This ended up being our first video and the start of something really special.
(This video is actually just a lot of me and my friend Felicia driving, drinking coffee, and singing in the car.)
My friend and I ended up enjoying this collection of clips so much that we used it as our final project and got a pretty decent grade for what it actually is. The night we got home from Thanksgiving my other friends also arrived back to campus. We only had about two weeks before Christmas break so we knew we had to decorate for the holiday right away. Since I had been used to filming a lot of what I was doing from the past week and was quite enjoying it, I decided to continue and film my friends and I decorating for the holiday.
At the time, I was scared to tell my friends that I actually wanted to keep vlogging (the term for filming your everyday life) because I was fearful that I wouldn’t follow through. In highschool my friends and I would always say that we were going to vlog or take some clips, but we never did anything with them. One of my biggest driving factors in keeping up with vlogging was actually that fear of not following through with it like in the past.
It has now been twelve weeks and time has just flown by, but I’ve even somehow convinced my friends to start vlogging things that they do. It’s actually been something I’ve been genuinely surprised by everyday. I never thought that I would be able to film my life because I never thought that it would be interesting enough. Turns out all the moms think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. Every week my mom and all of my friends’ moms eagerly wait to see a glimpse into the past week of their kid’s life. It’s a very cool opportunity getting to share my everyday life with friends and family so it doesn’t seem like I’m so far away.
Ultimately, I have found joy in all the different parts involved with filming my life everyday. While editing all the clips at the end of the week is one of the things I love to push off and usually begrudgingly start, it’s one of the best parts. Getting to see my whole week play back to me like a movie is something special. Since I’ve been watching hours of clips of myself and my friends for twelve weeks now, I’ve picked up on so many quirks that they have and that I have. I feel that I almost have another layer of connection with them. I love getting to share these videos with my mom and hearing her opinions about what my friends and I do. My mom is back in California and I only see her every four months, so the videos are a way for her to meet my friends and learn about where I’m at.
Along with learning, I hope that one day incoming freshmen find our videos. I remember spending hours watching college vlogs for other schools and was wishing that I could find one from Xavier. I hope that if there is ever a kid out there like me, hoping to learn more about Xavier before they get here, that they can find these videos and feel confident about their college choice.
One of the best perks by far is the bond that I have grown with my friends. While I might be the originator and the editor of these videos, they have become all of our videos. This is something that we all equally participate in and full-heartedly invest in. While filming my everyday life and posting it online may not be the most typical hobby, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I would encourage anyone to give vlogging a shot because you may never know the amount of memories you will create and be able to share with those in the present and future.
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