It is 6:45 a.m., and junior Annabelle Schembra sits down at her Ikea desk in her warm pink robe, pressing play to film her Get Ready With Me TikTok, where she has amassed 3k followers and 182.5k total likes.
Since third grade, Schembra has filmed videos for her own entertainment but only started posting after the inspiration of influencers like Alix Earle on her For You Page, which inspired her to develop the fearlessness to press “post.”
“My first Get Ready With Me was actually posted on Youtube Shorts because I was too nervous to post it on TikTok,” Schembra said. “I think I was getting ready for pickleball with my friend. I didn’t talk a lot, but I still got a decent amount of views.”
Since then, Schembra has distanced herself from Youtube Shorts and moved onto Tiktok, even though she had nearly 3,000 subscribers there and even received PR from companies who wanted her to share their products with her viewers. Still, this couldn’t keep Schembra from pursuing what she is most passionate about.
“I’ve kind of distanced myself from Youtube because I feel like on Tiktok I get to be more real about my faith and struggles of being a student athlete,” Schembra said.
Schembra’s Tiktok’s vary in content, but she mostly focuses on the popular social media trend of Get Ready With Me videos, where she films herself preparing for the day. Schembra also weaves in other content as well.
“Since I am also an athlete, I try to add in eating habits and just the day in the life with volleyball and practice, but also beauty and fashion,” Schembra said.
Schembra’s process isn’t as simple as it seems. The process starts the night before she films, when she lies in bed thinking about what happened during the day that she could talk about that’ll also grab viewers’ attention. In the morning, she must get dressed by 6:45 a.m. in order to have enough time to film.
“I sit at my desk from IKEA. I then have this little light that I turn on, which helps a lot with my videos because it brightens everything up. Then, I just put my phone on a little stand and set a timer to start my video,” Schembra said. “People think that for TikTok you just film and post, but it’s actually a lot more difficult than that. It takes me 15 minutes just to edit the video.”
What keeps Schembra going, alongside her busy schedule as a student athlete, is that she genuinely enjoys talking, whether it is about her faith, her life or volleyball.
“Hopefully, people can connect to what I talk about, and maybe I can even help people who are going through it,” Schembra said.
