This article has been syndicated to Her Campus from Dani Dearest by Dani Kluss, a Her Campus Blogger Network member. Read the full post here—and find out more about how to become a Campus Correspondent for your school!
My first semester of college, I wasn’t as involved as I wanted to be. My second semester in college, I changed that by taking a big step.
On Saint Patrick’s Day 2015, after many months of preparation and anticipation, I launched my college campus’ chapter of Her Campus. There were many ups and many downs along the way, but after three months of preparation our chapter launched with a team of 15 girls, which quickly grew to 20, and which is now at 25 and still growing. My role in this chapter is Campus Correspondent, which is the equivalent of the President or Editor-in-Chief.
When I first heard about this opportunity, I had only just begun to read Her Campus as I just had begun my first semester at Cal Lutheran University. Her Campus at its core is an online global magazine for college women, by college women. It is a wonderful resource for everything from style, health, beauty, and love, to life, career, LGBTQ+, high school, and the real world. There are over 6,700 people that contribute to Her Campus, and it has become a huge name in the college community.
Her Campus also offers content from over 270 chapters from college campus’ worldwide. These chapters, which is what I started at my university, provide a career launching point for college women with an interest in journalism, social media, marketing, communications, leadership, management, photography, event planning, and so much more. The chapters provide content similar to that on the Her Campus national website, but more focused toward a specific college campus to be relevant for a specific university of students.
My university isn’t well known for its student life involvement in extracurricular activities. We don’t have Greek life, we don’t have a huge student body, we don’t have many programs on campus that involve a large amount of the student body. What we do have, is drive. Students at my school are well known for being very driven in their academics and focused on their future career.
I absolutely love being involved in extracurricular activities. I love creating new things, starting programs and projects from the bottom up and making them into something big.Making an impact. Leading. Creating. This was the perfect opportunity for me to combine my favorite things and make an impact in my university. So I gathered together a team of my friends and we launched Her Campus Cal Lutheran.
At Her Campus Cal Lutheran we define our chapter as “an online hub for Cal Lutheran’s women that provides content that is both a resource and a source of entertainment, highlighting campus news & events, interesting students & faculty, campus photos, fashion and lifestyle content specifically tailored for women at Cal Lutheran.”
During the school year my team of writers works with our team of editors and our photographers to push out content, multiple articles per day, relevant to our student body. Then our social media team shares each story on our social media channels, tracks our analytics, and learns how to spread our reach. Our event planning team works with our publicity team to create events on campus to spread word about Her Campus Cal Lutheran as well as bring entertainment and other resources to our student body.
Launching a chapter of Her Campus at my university has been a huge game changer in my college career so far. In only 2 months I’ve had the opportunity to do some amazing things, and even more are on their way! Here are some of the great opportunities I’ve had through being involved in Her Campus at my school.
I’ve Been Able to Feel Accomplished
Only 2 months after we launched, Her Campus Cal Lutheran was awarded the title of a Silver Level Chapter by Her Campus Nationals who ranks each chapter by level based on a variety of guidelines each year. When that was announced I felt my heart skip a beat. I remember jumping out of my chair in my dorm room, turning to my 3 roommates who are on my Her Campus team and telling them the great news. They were so excited as well that we all ran straight to Starbucks to celebrate together.
Shortly after that we were given the news that one of our Campus Celebrity articles was awarded 2nd place out of all 270 chapters. The writer who wrote that article was incredibly excited and every girl in our chapter was incredibly proud of her for getting her hard work recognized.
I’ve Been Able to Learn to Trust People
In my free time I stage manage at a professional theatre. If you know anything about technical theatre, you may know that a stage manager is generally well known for doing everything themselves in order to get it right the first time. I definitely was the same way.
When I jumped into Her Campus I started off by re-editing every article before it posted. Being in charge of our social media channels all by myself. Being the only one in contact with school administration to solve problems and present to the school government. I did everything, except for the writing, myself. I quickly became overwhelmed and had to reach out for help to my social media team and my editors and find a plan that worked better for all of us.
It worked, now I supervise, but not micromanage. I’ve learned that stepping back and giving somebody else the reigns for a little while is a good idea and can sometimes lead to a large amount of growth within our chapter. I’m learning to delegate jobs, even when I’m not sure if they can handle it, and take a breather when I need it.
Read the full post on Dani Dearest, and find out how to start a Her Campus chapter at your school!