How does it feel to capture the attention of a population the size of a small country?
Lila Woolgar, a third-year student at the College of Liberal Arts, doesn’t have to imagine. His 815,000 followers on TikTok are larger than the population of more than 60 different countries.
Woolgar began uploading videos to TikTok in 2019 as a way to record pranks and, completely by accident, began to gain attention.
“It was not my intention at all to develop a following,” said Woolgar. “I just didn’t know how to (privatize) my account. I was just recording jokes to save for later, and learned the hard way that it was public. “
Now, Woolgar said she is recognized on campus once a week.
A typical video from her account, found under the username “Ratatootle,” opens with her sitting in her car. His lively speech and fast-paced cadence add a comical tone to his otherwise serious content topics, drawing the attention of his audience. Usually her videos focus on her latest experiences with her mental health issues.
Woolgar is now contemplating going into social media full time.
“I was planning to go to law school,” he said. “I still am, but I always wanted to follow an artistic path. Writing comedies is what I always wanted to do, but that is not a safe path ”.
As Woolgar has started to make a profit on her account and develop a following, she said, this path has become more attractive to her. Your account earns an average of $ 300- $ 600 per month based on your opinions.
Additionally, Woolgar said he gets some income from endorsements. Though he was hesitant to accept ad money, Woolgar said the minimum he will accept for a single ad video is $ 600.
“If I do advertising work, I charge a lot less, even though it feels like a lot,” Woolgar said. “It still feels like I’m stealing money from people. Learning that I am a valuable marketer has been very difficult for me. “
This tradeoff may seem like hefty for minute-long videos on TikTok, but Woolgar said each video takes about an hour and a half to shoot. This prep time allows her to hone her unique content style and rehearse in the fast-paced monologue she is known for.
“A large population of people who watch my content are neurodivergent,” he said. “(I was) learning to speak in an accessible way. I have to speak clearly enough so that people with audio processing problems can understand me, but also fast enough that people who have the attention span of rabbits, like me, can keep a video. “
Woolgar was diagnosed with ADHD in her childhood. Although she said the focus of her account is perpetually shifting, she balances comedy and mental health content. He centers many of his videos around his experiences with his diagnosis and what he learned from therapy.
Woolgar said that while having a following of that niche can create an immense sense of community, it also presents a problem with incorrect self-diagnosis.
“One of the most important things was to be careful about what was an ADHD trait and what was not,” he said. “Because I was talking about something and people in the comments were like, ‘Oh my gosh, I think I have ADHD now.’
“I wouldn’t see myself as a resource for something like that, but a lot of people do.”
Woolgar said it was because of the comments he received on his account that he discovered that he has traits indicative of a different diagnosis. Accounts like Woolgar’s can help people identify traits that may indicate the need to seek professional medical advice on diagnoses not previously considered.
“I found out through TikTok because (I posted) about something and people will say, ‘This is not a diagnostic trait of ADHD, (but it could be something else),’” he said.
Lack of accommodation at Purdue
As she began to better understand her personal needs, Woolgar said she began speaking on her account about her attempts to get accommodations in her classes at Purdue. She said it’s extremely frustrating to see how little Purdue adapts to people who struggle with the kinds of things that she does.
“There are so many hoops to jump through, and there is so much that shows why you need help,” he said. “It’s so heartbreaking and it’s a lot of work. I can’t even go through the process of getting accommodations because it’s too difficult. “
According to the Purdue Disability Resource Center, academic accommodations follow these steps: Student meets with a DRC staff member at the beginning of the semester to discuss their needs, then they fill out the appropriate request forms, and then DRC will respond with approval or denial of the request along with a course accessibility letter within 14 days.
“Students must request accommodations well in advance to allow the DRC sufficient time to review the application and relevant documentation, establish eligibility, and determine a reasonable accommodation through an interactive process with the student,” the site reads. DRC website.
Randall Ward, director of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said that this process is conventional in most universities.
He said the goal of DRC is to provide access to accommodations without changing the learning outcomes of the course.
“In higher education, such accommodations can fundamentally alter the learning outcomes of a given course,” he said. “In which case, ‘fewer test questions’ (a common accommodation in K-12 education) would be considered an unreasonable request.”
Ward also said that DRC continues to improve students’ ability to access resources.
“We went to an electronic format process whereby students can, at any time of the day or night, complete initial applications,” he said. “It has been a really positive change that we have made to make it more accessible to people.”
Woolgar said that process doesn’t always work.
“I feel like my advisers didn’t listen to me,” he said. “I’ve been asking for this kind of thing for years.”
