Hello and welcome back to Conversations with Karla! In case you missed it, the last conversation centered around the way productivity is depicted on social media. This week, I met with Yuliana Tsapar, an eighth-semester marketing major with a minor in Spanish, to talk about the many opportunities that have opened for her because of social media.
In her first semester at the University of Connecticut, Tsapar was assigned to watch “The True Cost,” a documentary that depicts how fast fashion violates human rights due to poor working conditions and its negative effects on the planet. The passion to educate people further on this issue drove Tsapar to create her blog.
During her freshman year, Tsapar applied and was accepted into the (then-called) Freshman Female Founders cohort of the Werth Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. In this cohort, members dive into entrepreneurial practices by creating a project out of one of their passions. Tsapar’s project would end up being a blog called Shift with Yuliana, where she writes articles about sustainable fashion and ways it can be adopted. This has also since been accompanied by Instagram and TikTok accounts.
However, creating and running this blog has not always been smooth sailing for Tsapar. “I think perfection is the number one enemy and that held me back for so long,” she said.
Tsapar explained how small details such as the color scheme and how the logo looked held her back. She also talked about how she believes that focusing on little details poses the biggest challenge in any creative project.
“Once you just make a decision and accept the fact that it’s not going to be perfect and you might end up hating it but that’s just part of the process — that’s the only way you’re going to put something out there,” she said.
Tsapar also admitted to not consistently uploading on her blog or posting on her social media accounts. She runs the blog and the social media accounts entirely on her own while staying on top of her academics and figuring out plans for life post-graduation. She talked about how she often switches between being consistent on the blog and not posting much on social media.
However, Tsapar said that she does not hold herself nor her blog to a stringent set of standards. She said that she does this to give herself more creative freedom and the leeway to lean into whatever interests her at a given moment. Right now, she dedicates most of her time to video editing because that is what piques her interest the most.
“You’re never going to have more time than you do right now. That’s a hard pill to swallow, but it’s the truth,” she said. Tsapar gained this perspective because, while she is extremely busy now, the workload will only increase as time goes on. She said that if she can learn to multitask, focus and prioritize now, she will set herself up for success.
This blog has opened up many doors for Tsapar in her college career. During her freshman year, just after creating her blog as part of her project for the Werth Institute, Tsapar shared the project with a UConn alumna who worked as a fashion designer and eventually offered her an internship position.
Tsapar went on to use the blog as part of her application to Parsons Paris, where she was able to study fashion for six months in 2023.
Her most recent success story with the blog is that it helped build her applications to master’s programs. The blog landed Tsapar a spot at the Institut Français de la Mode, one of the most selective fashion programs in the world.
Tsapar encourages anyone who is considering pursuing a creative project through social media to just post and stop imagining worst-case scenarios.
“Think about yourself five or 10 years from now looking back and having your thoughts back then documented. You’re going to be so glad that [you posted] and you didn’t let other people hold you back from something you knew in your heart you wanted to follow,” she said.
That’s all for this week’s Conversations with Karla! Come back next week to meet a new student and learn about a new perspective on social media.