When Catherine Goetze started blogging about her freshman year at Stanford University, she had no idea she was creating the popular website and Youtube channel “Cath in College.”
Filming her life at Stanford was a natural continuation of what she had done since she was in the 7th grade, creating video skits with her siblings using her parents’ camcorder. In high school, things got a little more serious, since her school had a robust video journalism program.
When she got to college, she kept filming and editing videos and uploading them to the Youtube channel that is now called “Cath in College”.
The videos, while produced and edited with professional skill, mostly chronicle Goetze and her friends everyday life at Stanford, which is what draws many of the viewers, who are largely high school students.
Many of Goetze’s viewers said they were drawn to the show because of the window it allowed into everyday life at one of country’s most prestigious universities.
The video blog and website, which now has over 20,000 subscribers, garners up to 100,000 views per video. “Cath in College” has also turned into a small business of sorts: with corporate sponsorship for each video and merchandise sold at the Stanford Student Store. Goetze recently hired five interns to help manage and produce the site.
Now in her senior year, Goetze talks about how she started the channel, what it’s like to navigate college life as a blossoming internet celebrity, and what it will mean for the channel when she graduates in June.
