I was going to try to sum up my YouTube journey in a concise, easily digestible manner, but I quickly realized after accidentally typing a 1300-word essay about my experience, that it is impossible for me to sum up nearly a decade-long journey in a brief way and still do it justice. So, buckle up and prepare to listen to me lay out my time on YouTube from the very beginning of the rollercoaster! 

(If you don’t want to read, scroll to the bottom of this page to see a collection of my favorite videos)

This channel is one of the first things I can remember being truly passionate about in my life. It was the summer of 2012 (i.e., the summer before eighth grade), and as a fresh 13-year-old, I had an unbelievable amount of time on my hands. What did I do with this ample free time? Watch an ungodly amount of YouTube videos, of course. All of my YouTube video consumption eventually inspired me to give the YouTube thing a try for myself. So, after five minutes (maximum) of brainstorming a quirky channel name, I created the channel that was originally known as “BeautyInfection797”. While I was the one to publish the channel and upload the first video, I wasn’t the only one behind the creation. I quickly convinced my identical twin sister, Emma, and later, our middle school best friend, Emily, to be a part of the channel as well. The rest of this summer consisted of me discovering iMovie on my dad’s MacBook Pro and pretending like I was a professional video editor, while the three of us filmed random beauty videos and YouTube challenges. It ultimately became as a creative outlet for me, my twin sister, and friend. 

Eighth grade began and we invited our other friend, Rylee, to be the fourth member of our channel. At this point, every ounce of free time was either spent watching or creating YouTube videos (unless, of course, we were forcing our parents to drop us off at the mall so we could buy new makeup and clothes to feature in our videos). 

As middle school came to an end and high school started creeping up on us, Emily parted from the channel and it became just me, Emma, and Rylee. We entered high school and continued to pour our heart and souls into BeautyInfection797. Then, we soon came up with a video concept that quickly became the thing to make our channel and audience grow the most; "Outfits of the Week (OOTW) at School”. This consisted of us standing in the hallways of our high school and filming our outfits every day of the school week. These videos gained the most attention on our channel and became my favorite videos to film because I was in charge of editing them, and I had a valid excuse to dress cute for school.

Our drive for YouTube remained consistent throughout most of high school, and it even turned into more than just a hobby when we discovered that we could monetize our videos. Eventually, quirky channel names started to become less mainstream, so we made the big decision to change our channel name from “BeautyInfection797” to “Sara Emma Rylee”. Things remained steady, and at the end of our junior year (2016), Rylee decided to step down from the channel so she could focus on work. The channel then became known as “Sara & Emma”.

The following summer and throughout our senior year, Emma and I put the most effort into our channel that we had ever put in. Earlier that year, we had transitioned from editing on iMovie to editing with Final Cut Pro X, and later we invested in a nicer DSLR camera with our saved-up YouTube money. We even started uploading videos three times a week (which is a lot for people who edit their own videos). Meanwhile, we did this all without the help of a talent agency or manager. 

To this day, I credit my success on YouTube as the thing that taught me the most about the social media industry. However, I can’t go without giving credit to my failures as well. 

We graduated from high school and began a new chapter in our lives: college. Reality slapped us hard in the face when we discovered that the precious free time we dedicated to YouTube was going to significantly decrease while getting a degree. At the same time, the YouTube we grew up on started evolving into something we weren’t familiar with. A platform that consisted of creators who made content out of authenticity and passion, suddenly became clouded with heavily click-baited titles and thumbnails and money-hungry people. That’s not to say YouTube was perfect before. However, somewhere around 2016-2017, content creation took on a new meaning, and Emma and I had a hard time keeping up and adjusting to this while we were transitioning into a new chapter of our lives.

We continued to upload on YouTube throughout college when we had free time. Our "OOTWs at School” evolved to “OOTWs In College”. We made one last name change to our channel during our freshman year - from “Sara & Emma” to “Pardy Twins”. We even uploaded our first “viral” video during our sophomore year (which now has almost 1.9 million views). However, as we got deeper into college, our time for YouTube became scarcer, which unfortunately turned YouTube into something that brought more stress than excitement. Analyzing our channel analytics wasn’t as exciting once our growth started to reflect the burnout we were experiencing. Despite the burnout, the one thing we never stopped consistently uploading was our College OOTWs. Then, COVID-19 hit in the middle of our junior year, and burnout took on a whole new meaning for the next year and a half. We were no longer able to film our OOTW videos, as all classes would be done online in the comfort of our sweatpants for the rest of our college experience (side note: if someone had told me my last OOTW would be a random week in March of 2020, I would have stepped my outfit game WAY up). Then, senior year came around and we would upload any time we would have a spark of motivation that we hadn’t used up trying to motivate ourselves for online classes. Now, as a recent college graduate currently looking for a big girl job, my relationship and standing with YouTube remains similar. 

So, here I am with a nine-year-old YouTube channel that some might see in its current state as a failure. However, I do not see it that way. For many reasons. Not only do I have years of footage from my life that I can look back on and cherish forever, I also have nearly a decade of experience in the social media and internet industry that not everyone can easily learn by simply going to school. I learned valuable skills, such as how to read insight analytics, how to network, communicate, and collaborate with brands, how to effectively speak to an audience through social media, I have video and photo editing skills and graphic design skills that I never would have learned in my college courses, and I learned how to stay organized throughout all of it. 

The most important thing I learned, however, is how strong my abilities are. I don't sit here and question why my nine-year-old passion project stopped growing. I know the exact actions I made — or rather, the actions I didn't make — to get where I am now. I know I can use the lessons from my successes and failures to help other people, voices, and brands do better. Overall, I know I have the drive and demonstrated experience to pour my heart into something so that it can see success, because I did it on YouTube.