- Hi, everyone.
Welcome back to my channel.
We've got a very special guest today.
This is Katie.
- Hey, everybody.
My name's Katie, and my channel's called katherinethe19th,
and I talk a lot about videography, and I make daily vlogs.
- We're both at VidCon doing the classic VidCon hotel room,
and we're gonna talk about your creative career
because, I don't know about you,
but I felt like when I was in university.
Katie's in university now, by the way.
What are you studying?
Maybe we should tell people that.
- Yeah, so my major is, the official title
is English Rhetoric Media and Professional Communications
with a specialization in digital media studies.
- That is a mouthful.
- It is.
What it comes down to is media and communications,
including writing social media.
I definitely come at it with a videography background,
but that's more from my side projects
and just my own personal interests.
- Do you feel like within this university degree
you're doing, you're being angled towards one certain
like end goal, job you'll work in?
I found for me in design school
a lot of it seemed to be angled
towards working at an agency.
- Yeah, I definitely feel like what I actually want to do
isn't what probably the professors in my program
assume the students will be doing.
And the classic thing for English majors
is when people find out you're studying English,
they ask oh, so do you want to be a teacher?
Because people seem to think that's the only thing
you can do with that kind of degree,
and I end up just kind of explaining to a lot of people
like oh no, I just want to be a writer
because that's the easiest way
to get old people off your case
when they're asking you what you're studying.
But in reality, what I want to do is just so much more
like diverse than that, and definitely what I'm learning
contributes to it, but it's not like
what my final career will be is only
from what I've learned in school.
- I feel like in the past, you'd go to university
for a certain thing because there was like a clear end goal
in mind of the job you'd get at the end of that degree,
and I don't think that's the case these days.
People like you are studying this thing
that doesn't have one clear end point.
Like yes, you could be a teacher,
but you're using it as a jumping off point
into the thing that you really want to do.
- Exactly, yeah.
Like what you're learning isn't necessarily
a set-by-step here's how to get the career you want.
It's more of a general background of information
that you can use and put together
with stuff that you learn outside of the classroom
to get to the point that you actually want to be at.
- Yeah, and that learning stuff outside the classroom
I think is a really good point.
And I don't know about you, but when I went to university,
I kind of expected that I was paying them all this money
and I was gonna learn everything I needed to know
to be a designer, and that was not the case. (laughing)
- Exactly, I have found that so much.
I took a bunch of classes in first year
surrounding like some of the Adobe programs
like Photoshop and Illustrator, and I expected to go there
and like learn everything that I needed
about those programs, but then I got there,
and the professor was like oh, just go to lynda.com
and check out some tutorials,
and then we're gonna talk about this in class instead.
And at first, I was like really disappointed
because I was like I'm paying you so much in tuition.
I want to learn how to use these programs.
But throughout the rest of my years in school,
I've realized that a lot of that is more on your own time
and you have to teach yourself.
- Yeah, it does free up the class time then more
for the conceptual thinking.
- Exactly.
- And the harder to learn online type of things.
So what would be your dream job?
Like what do you want to do when you leave university?
- Yeah, so my absolute dream,
which I dunno how realistic or not this is.
- We don't have to be realistic.
- It doesn't matter.
I really want to start my own business.
Well, I kind of have already,
but right now what I do is I'm a freelance videographer
for small businesses, so I make promotional videos
for small businesses from my hometown,
which has been going well, but my dream is to produce videos
for other online content creators
because that's really where my heart is.
- Cool.
- I love YouTube and I love other social media,
and so, yeah.
And I got a taste of that this weekend,
which was really awesome.
- That so cool.
Okay, so you're already taking steps towards this career
and taking this opportunity to film for a creator at VidCon.
So do you think that when you finish university,
you'll look, like rather than look for a job
at a company, you're gonna look to build up your own thing?
- Yes, definitely.
So this summer, I'm in my final summer before I graduate,
which is kinda scary.
- Yeah, but exciting.
- Yes, and I've been trying
to build up my freelance business, like I said,
working with small businesses, and now being at VidCon,
hopefully that can help me network
with other online content creators
to kind of work towards building my business
more in that direction.
But yeah, I definitely don't see myself applying
to a bunch of different companies once I graduate
or at least I hope I don't have to do that.
I kinda see that as like a plan B
if the whole like entrepreneurship thing doesn't work out.
So yeah, that's definitely what I kinda am gonna try to do.
- Cool, you have a totally different approach to it than me
because I wasn't even thinking about doing my own business
outside of design school.
Like that just wasn't something
that I had an interest in doing.
I basically took the first design job that came to me,
and that was not a bad thing actually.
You know what?
Because a lot of my classmates finished our design degree,
and they didn't have work for months and months and months
because they were waiting for like the perfect thing
to come along, you know, the agency
with the prestigious name or whatever.
Whereas, I just wanted to work,
and I found a place that wanted to hire me.
It was a cool little company,
and I was working straight out of graduating,
which was rare for my school.
So I think my advice would be you don't have to wait
for the perfect opportunity.
As long as you're working in the industry
that you want to be in, you can, once you're in,
you can start taking the steps, right?
- Exactly, and I think there is definitely something
to be said for that stability of just having the work
and being able to go from there,
and that's why I don't want to entirely cut myself off
from applying to companies if that's what I need to do
and then working on my business on the side
because there's nothing wrong with having that
as a side hustle and trying to build that up
while you're making money.
Everybody needs to have a job,
and there's like no shame in that if you can't reach
your big dream right out of university.
- Has this always been something you wanted to do,
or has this career as an entrepreneur is what you want to do
like, I dunno, come to you later in life or?
- I dunno.
I feel like I've been kind of entrepreneurial.
I remember as like a little kid having lemonade stands
with my cousins and that kind of thing.
And then throughout high school,
I would always have these ideas of like oh I want
to start a clothing company with my friend
or like all these random things
that never really came to fruition.
But now I feel like I have a combination
of that entrepreneurial passion,
but then also something that I do know how to do
and it actually could make me money.
You kinda have to find that rope
because before I've had other things
that I really wanted to do,
but it's not necessarily practical,
but with videography, I found that intersection
of my creative passion and something people
are willing to pay for.
- Yes, that is smart.
That is smart business thinking right there.
I want people to hear your story
and realize that if you've got this inkling
of an idea in mind of how you want to be spending your time
once you graduate university or high school,
whatever it is, situation you're in now,
you need to start working on it now, right?
Like don't wait until the end of that
to start working on it
because then you're gonna be behind, right?
- Exactly, yeah.
- The sooner you can start, the better.
And the same goes for working at a company too.
If you want to do what I do,
which is work at a tech company,
even then, working on your portfolio in your spare time.
You can't rely on what you learn in university
to be the end all be all is I guess the point
of this video.
- Yeah, definitely.
I think it's never too early to start,
and I think I probably set like too high
of expectations for myself, but I would like to think
that I want to get this business that I'm building now
kind of off the ground before I even graduate
so that I know when I graduate,
I could just start doing it full time.
- Yes.
- That would be the absolute goal.
It's not like I'm gonna wait until I graduate
and then say okay, now I'll give it a shot.
- Thank you for sharing your story.
- Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
- We are gonna film a video on Katie's channel, as well.
It's gonna be about having a side project, right?
- Yeah, all the reasons why you should start a side project,
so if you're interested in that,
may sure you go check out my channel.
- Yeah, it'll be linked on a card up there
and also in the description box
if for some reason the cards aren't working.
Thanks for watching this video.
Give it a thumbs up if you enjoyed it,
and I'd love to hear what your plans are.
If you're studying right now or maybe if you're like
in a transitional phase of life, I guess,
what is your dream career, like your dream job,
and how are you working towards it?
Let's talk about that down below.
Make sure you subscribe to Katie, as well.
Definitely needed to say that
because she's got an amazing channel,
and she put a lot of hard work into it, so yeah.
Thank you for coming on.
- Yeah, thanks so much.
Thanks for watching.
- Bye!
- [Charli] Cool do you want to just put your memory card in
and film on this?
- [Lucia] you guys are great!
(laughing)