Picture this: you’ve just moved into halls and it’s your first morning in Cambridge. The 9am briefing looms, but it’s okay because you’re going to make yourself a nice big bowl of Cheerio’s and a cup of tea which you’ll probably burn your tongue on. But when you walk into the kitchen, you’re greeted by not only your flatmate’s dirty plates from the night before, but also ... a six inch tripod? The phone camera is angled towards a stack of pancakes, over which a girl is pouring maple syrup and demonstrating levels of concentration that surely aren’t demanded by the task at hand.

Here’s where I hold my hands up: it’s me. I’m the girl who will briefly interrupt the conversation at brunch to arrange our food for the best photo; I’ll also want to stop to snap a shot of the coffees we get afterwards. As an unsuspecting friend said to me at formal the other night while I was taking (what I thought was) a surreptitious pic of the deep-fried mozzarella balls: the phone eats first. And oh boy, it does.

Coming to Cambridge I feel like I’m back in year ten, hiding the secret food account I’d made to stave off insanity during lockdown.

“I’ll tell people about it once I hit 1,000 followers,” I remember saying to my mum, enjoying the thrill of even the thought of my silly little porridge bowls reaching that many people.

Well, here we are. 58,400 followers – and hundreds of breakfasts – later, I’m still sheepish about letting people know about my foodie alter-ego on Instagram. While it had become part of my identity at secondary school, (shoutout to the Instagram explore page for exposing me to all my friends) I suddenly find myself once again navigating the secret world of incognito ‘content creation’. Don’t worry, I make myself cringe too.

“I make myself cringe too”

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve told some close friends (or been found out regardless). It’s all about locating the sweet spot where you’ve known them long enough that you’re pretty sure they’ll still want to hang out even if you’re ‘vlogging’ that day, but not too soon into the friendship that it looks like you’re making it a personality trait. I never post my friends on social media, but it can be helpful to know why I’m taking so many 0.5s.

So I guess I’m now hard-launching @mindfully.jess, which is liberating, but also a bit scary. I feel like there’s something of a stigma around taking social media seriously – that you must be vain, self-obsessed, out of touch with reality. But it’s only been in recent weeks that I’ve even started showing my face on my account. Being a recipe creator and living in student accommodation without an oven, freezer or privacy requires a never-before-seen level of resourcefulness, and given that studying at Cambridge already requires a never-before-seen level of tenacity, I’ve decided to make my life a bit easier and transition out of the food niche and into the lifestyle one.

Documenting my days in Cambridge has been hit-and-miss. You don’t even want to know how many random clips I have on my phone of me sat in the library ‘studying’ (read: trying not to look like I have a double chin while I stare down at a laptop screen) or getting ready for formal, before I chicken out of filming in public and proceed to keep my phone firmly stuffed in my pocket for the rest of the day. So unless I want to wear the same clothes every single day, or I try to make ‘one hour in my life’ a new trend, all of these videos are pretty much unusable.

Don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom. I love documenting my life online. Cambridge makes it easy to produce aesthetic content (I owe at least 300 followers to King’s chapel), but the long hours in the library take some romanticising. Filming my days keeps me accountable and gives me time to reflect when I finally put all the clips together at the end of the night. I suddenly become attentive to the small moments that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. The crisp autumn leaves on the ground; freshly painted nails; the feeling of picking out a nice outfit and leaving your room, reusable cup from the free college stash in hand.

So if there’s anyone out there reading this article who’s always wanted to be like that person who actually has the confidence to post online, I’m here to reassure that it’s not out of reach. It’s as simple as picking up your phone, starting to film – and maybe not even telling anyone until you hit 1k. Or 58k. The world really is your oyster.