A head-and-shoulders illustrated portrait of Ceri Riley. She is smiling with her mouth closed, has light skin, and long light pink hair.

VEDA by Ceri Riley '16

In which I try to vlog every day in April

VEDA (Vlog Every Day in April) is a thing in some parts of the YouTube community, and it’s basically a month when a bunch of (usually smaller/less well-known) vloggers all try to post a new video every day. It’s less organized than something like NaNoWriMo, and more just an excuse to be disciplined and make consistent content.

I’m going to use it to motivate myself to make some low-commitment dailyvlogs, avoiding scripts and mostly just giving snapshots into MIT life. For the first couple days (or at least I noticed it today) I’m probably going to be more hesistant about filming randomly with my phone, but I hope that I’ll get more comfortable over the course of the month and gradually show more bits of my life.

Feel free to request random things you’d like me to record, whether it’s certain parts of campus or food or whatever! Otherwise I’ll just do my best to document things and ramble at a camera sometimes.

I don’t want to spam MIT Admissions with too many daily updates, so I’ll put all the videos in a playlist below. Here’s a masterlist of all the vlogs, with little descriptions (in case you want to pick and choose which videos to watch):

Calendar Flip || VEDA #1 – introductions, juice boxes, the dome at night

This is Not a Picture || VEDA #2 – #askMIT, career fairs, Big Fish (the musical)

Apathy || VEDA #3 – gummy penguins, The Last Five Years, stamp attacks

Refrigerator Running || VEDA #4 – Mario Kart, bloggers irl, catchphrase

Mozzarella Sticks || VEDA #5 – animation, TAing, stolen food

Glasses || VEDA #6 – figure drawing, ranidaphobia, internship searches

It’s Michelle’s Song || VEDA #7 – moar #askMIT, psetting, random YouTube statistics

The New Entity || VEDA #8 – about me, The Friendly Toast, meta vlogging

Token Male Friend || VEDA #9 – music pt.1, interrupting Skype calls, email struggles

New York City || VEDA #10 – bus rides, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, alumni friendship

Treat Yo Self || VEDA #11 – toy stores, Central Park wandering, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder

A Very Sports-y Sunday || VEDA #12  – people-watching, miles & piles of work, not actually playing sports

Nature Agrees with Us || VEDA #13  – costume design, sunshine, internet cats

Chocolate Therapy || VEDA #14 – free cone day, Costco trips, more stamp attacks

Laundry Day || VEDA #15 – scraped fingers, laundry montages, burger cupcakes

All the Little Prefrosh || VEDA #16 – CPW begins, the box office, Simmons lights

My Real Face || VEDA #17 – the music library, the box office (again), Meet the Bloggers 

You Can’t Just Ask for Prefrosh || VEDA #18 – so many prefrosh, game nights, tbh just a lot of laughter

Free Ice Cream to This (Death by Exercise) || VEDA #19 – focus groups, dancing, AXO Run the Night

Marathon Monday || VEDA #20 – the Boston Marathon, audio editing, cups

Catching Up || VEDA #21 – voiceover recording, s0 much w0rk, friendship things

Friends and Community || VEDA # 22 – Steam Cafe, watching TV, Shrek vlogs

Season 3 Premiere || VEDA #23 – dessert study breaks, gesture-filled q&a, interrupting trains

A Very YouTube-Filled Weekend || VEDA #24 – Vsauce and Veritasium, improv, existential crises

Adrenaline Rush || VEDA #25 – MIT Ballroom Open, Tour Because Awesome (HANK GREEN), loungin’ 

Optimism || VEDA #26 – MIT Ballroom Open II, Jeremy Jordan, reflecting on jadedness

Staring at Spreadsheets || VEDA #27 – stress, agriculture/drought data, late night maps

I Have the Foam || VEDA #28 – impromptu tug-of-war, TV Tuesday, bridge mysteries

Internet Famous || VEDA #29 – sneak preview, MacGregor tour ft. Andrea and Jamal, one day more

That’s Very Meta || VEDA #30 – Collier Memorial, vlogception, calendars upon calendars

UPDATE 4/7/15

I reuploaded the first video because someone pointed out very kindly that there was the lovely bright blue “Click Analyze to begin” prompt from Adobe Premiere over the last clip. Clearly I was too tired to rewatch the video after posting it, which was a poor choice. Other than that, I’ve kept to the daily video filming/editing/posting without too much trouble!

UPDATE 4/9/15

Bloggers have been posting and this entry was pushed off the first page! So I’m bumping it back up to the top because I’m still making videos and uploading them every day. It feels kind of weird to bump my own post… but I also don’t want my videos to get completely lost in the Internet void. Hopefully nobody minds too much.

It was also pointed out to me in the comments that, upon skimming this blog post, it doesn’t look like I’ve been keeping up with dailyvlogs. Especially if you didn’t notice that the embedded YouTube player was a playlist rather than a single video. To hopefully avoid this confusion, I’m going to stick a master list of all my vlogs at the top of the page with some handy links and brief descriptions.

UPDATE 4/15/15
This is the first day I was too exhausted and accidentally fell asleep in between editing & uploading yesterday’s VEDA. So I didn’t hit the 4am deadline, but I woke up at 7:33 because my window faces East and MacGregor is like a brick oven sometimes. I’ll probably post the video and then try to get a little more sleep.
UPDATE 4/16/15
Second time I’ve needed to bump this post to make sure it stays on the front page — thankfully I’ve only needed to do so about once per week, which isn’t too often. I can’t believe I’m already halfway through VEDA! It doesn’t feel like half a month has passed already, but I’ve definitely been busier than usual.
I hope to see some of you guys during CPW, either at Meet the Bloggers or around MacGregor (or elsewhere on campus)! I’m going to try to pop by some events that my friends are planning around campus, mostly to steal food and/or provide moral support. I’ve been told many a time that I don’t look like my avatar (none of the bloggers *really* do), but you might know my face/backpack color/etc. from vlogs and stuff.
UPDATE 4/22/15
Bump^3 (hopefully the last one?) and I’m two-thirds through VEDA so far. I think this weekend has produced the longest and shortest videos I’ve made thus far — some days were really packed and then yesterday I literally just did homework in bed for hours and hours. That’s how it goes, sometimes.
I still have a couple topics I need to cover before the end of the month, like asking one of my Course 6 friends about their classes and maybe wandering through MacGregor (impromptu tour + MacCon trip might be necessary). Otherwise, work is ramping up because I have final projects/essays rather than exams, so I think I’ll be happy to reclaim an extra hour or two of life/work/sleep when VEDA is done. Not that I don’t like vlogging, it’s just… y’know… school.
UPDATE 4/27/15
Only 4 vlogs left — April feels like it flew by! These last couple vlogs have had a lot of me talking & reflecting on my life and things, but I still need to get around to doing a last couple MIT-related requests (since showing generic life at MIT was one of my initial goals). I’m going to try and end strong and broaden the scope of these videos back to “general life at MIT” instead of “Ceri R. talking out her struggles to a camera every day.”

UPDATE 5/1/15

It’s been an amazing month, and I’m just going to give this post a little baby bump to keep it on the front page for one last day. VEDA has been very fun and very challenging, but now I (and you all, and posterity) have these videos to look back upon in case you were wondering what my life (vaguely) looked like in April 2015. It’s going to be strange, not constantly thinking about what/who/where to film every single day, but I’m definitely going to appreciate the 1-3 hours it frees up every night because of all the final projects.

Thanks again to everyone who stuck with me for the entire month! <3