Hello to all (maybe ten) of my wonderful readers. I’m so excited to announce that this past semester, I have officially started my first term as the President of the C of C HerCampus chapter. Isn’t that just the most exciting news you’ve ever heard? From this point forward, I expect all members of the chapter to refer to me only as Madame President and to roll out a hot pink velvet carpet every time I step indoors. These changes will be effective immediately.
Now don’t worry everyone, I’m not being serious. Clearly, I would opt for a pastel pink carpet — hot pink is going to clash with too many of my outfits.
Okay, NOW I’m done giving myself the most ridiculous introduction a chapter president has probably ever made. But when I applied for the position in the Spring, I had really no idea how serious it would be. We had been doing online classes for over a full year by that point, our last president was sadly graduating, and the application opened up around Valentine’s Day.
My roommate, a member of the chapter’s exec board, asked me if I planned on applying for the presidency. I replied that I wasn’t sure, I’d never really thought about it, but promised I would and that I’d let her know as soon as possible. I started trying to evaluate if I would be a good candidate for the position of running the whole club, and this got me thinking about how much HerCampus had impacted me throughout my college career. Writing is something that I have simply always loved, a second nature even. I’ve filled hundreds of notebooks of varying binds, colors, and lines to the brim of just the things that I’m thinking at any given moment. But I never had an outlet for it, or really any way to share it with others that felt like it was important. Especially when it came to writing things on current events: I wanted to open my thoughts up to debate in a productive, meaningful way that I could be proud of, and I hoped that coming to college would allow me to find a way to do so.
I shared this dilemma with one of my close friends, and her face lit up because she knew she had the perfect solution. She told me to follow @hercampuscofc on Instagram and apply to be a content writer if I liked what I saw from the group. When I got back to my dorm, I did just that, and what I saw was an overwhelmingly supportive community of empowered students who have this amazing opportunity to share their work with the world. So obviously, I signed up that night.
I’ve been a member of HerCampus at C of C since that first semester freshman year, and it went from being something about which I knew nothing to one of my proudest accomplishments. Remembering this, I knew that applying for president was what I wanted to do.
When going through the interview process, I made sure to emphasize how much I wanted to expand and build upon the sense of community we already had, because it helped me find my place so much. I wanted to share that same love with as many people as possible — now I have the platform to do so!
To any of the members of my chapter who are reading this, I hope that this becomes something that you find a voice in, like I did. I want HerCampus to be a commitment you have that makes you feel uplifted, where you are comfortable to be the most authentic versions of yourselves. I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year holds, and remember to have the pastel pink carpet ready next time you see me. HCXO <3