Christie is a fiery red head with a personality to match. Many of you might have seen her running around from one side of campus to another as she tries to attend every meeting for the publications she’s apart of (with an iced coffee in hand and her GPhi letters on her back, of course).
Name: Christie Childers
Hometown: Bradenton, FL
Year: Junior
Major: Double Major in Studio Art and Art History
Minors: You can’t minor in print making, but I focus a lot on print making aside Art and Art History because I love it and it is a lot of fun!
Life at FSU
Her Campus (HC): What is your FSU involvement?
Christie Childers (CC): I am in FSU Gamma Phi Beta sorority, staff writer for The Odyssey, I am the Art Director for CLUTCH Magazine, I co-created CyberNole and I am just pretty involved with the Art program. It’s really inclusive and has the students spend a lot of time on campus doing projects. We spend a lot of time in the studios making things outside of class just because art is a process and it takes so long.
HC: Can you explain what CyberNole is and how that came about?
CC: Yes! I love CyberNole! It is FSU’s premier tech online publication. I helped create it with my friend Nick and a solid group of five of us who were dedicated to it’s beginning and helping it grow! We basically recruit writers from all different majors and all different interests. We are very diverse in CyberNole. We have girls, we have guys, and we just write about technology and pop culture. We offer internship credit through your major so it’s a really nice way for Editing, Writing & Media students to get their internship credit out of the way or to receive internship credit through the school. We started last fall with a group of five solid people and now our roster has at least 20 people on it! We’ve grown like crazy in the two semesters. It’s my favorite meeting of the week!
HC: Do you think having it be a tech blog helps it stand out against the other publications at FSU (because there are so many)?
CC: Yeah! I think the reason my friend Nick sparked the idea was because he had never really seen anything like that from FSU before and there wasn’t an outlet for tech interested people to write for.
HC: Being involved with so much do you have a typical day?
CC: I think this semester has been my busiest semester because I’ve gotten to such a schedule this semester. Monday/Wednesday, for example, I am on campus by 8:45am and then after my classes try to make it to the gym, go to all my meetings and I usually have something with my sorority on Mondays. I won’t get home till 9pm at night so I am on campus for over 12 hours on Mondays! That’s the busiest day of my life. If I get a chance to go home for breaks I will, but others days I’ll be stuck on campus. It’s okay because I’ve been feeling very productive this semester.
HC: What would you say is the biggest impact your sorority has had on you?
CC: Aww I love Gamma Phi! Its nice to know that in such a large community like Florida State that you have a really solid core group of people who are going to be there to help you if you ever need anything, to give you advice or to just to sit around and laugh with if you’re having a really rough day and need some comic relief.
HC: Being a transfer student, was it hard to get adjusted to the FSU culture?
CC: My freshman year I went to FAU and I decided to transfer here because I came up for a visit for my birthday and I fell in love with Florida State. The transfer process was really hard because I basically had to re-apply for college all over again, but it was a really easy adjustment because basically all my best friends from high school came to Florida State and I don’t know why I didn’t come in the first place [laughs]. It’s unknown to me still.
HC: What would you say has been your greatest accomplishment at FSU so far?
CC: Building and co-creating CyberNole was a huge accomplishment that I am going to be proud of forever because it was my way to leave a legacy on FSU’s campus, but then again I am doing art directing for CLUTCH and that is huge for me because that is so driven towards what I want to do for a career and hopefully I’ll just keep moving up the totem poll! Also, just staying on track because I have worked really hard and been tenacious and now that I am 21 I can say that I am exactly where I want to be!
HC: What is something you have learned from having so many leadership roles?
CC: I guess just, and I do this a lot, so I’m preaching something I don’t always practice, but I’ve learned to not spread yourself too thin. I think because I’ve done that I know it’s not necessarily always the best idea, and I’ve learned how to time manage and how to say “no.” I think that is something that is really important because I think that is how some people get way too stressed out and it leads them into a quarter life crisis.
Best Friends with Mary-Kate and Ashley
HC: Who is your biggest role model?
CC: Ok, so I’m not going to sit here and be like my mom, or my parents, or my brother, even though he is a huge role model so I’m just going to put it out there and say Mary Kate and Ashley! Those girls are everything to me. I have been obsessed with them since I was a little girl, I got to meet them when I was six, and they just epitomize to me everything that is great. They have been working their entire lives since babyhood to now. Their name is a brand and they have built themselves up, they are handworkers and they just epitomize everything that I love.
HC: How did you meet Mary Kate and Ashley?
CC: My mom is such a super star. For my 6th birthday, I think it was my 6th birthday, my mom will probably read this and be like “Christie that’s not right!” but for my 6th birthday they used to do this thing called “Sailing With the Stars” and you could buy cruises to hang out with celebrities. I don’t know how, but I always ended up right next them and I literally met them 10 different times on that cruise.
HC: So you guys are casually best friends?
CC: Yeah I’m like casually really close with Mary-Kate and Ashley [laughs]. Every time I was interning at Fashion Week it was my goal to stalk them and find them again and show them my picture when I was little and recreate it, but they’re so low-key that you can’t get anywhere near them now. It’s insane.
Desigual Show NYFW
Fashion Week Intern
HC: How was that experience of interning for New York fashion week?
CC: That was the best/worst experience of my entire life [laughs]. I thought I was a good multi-tasker before I took on that internship, but now I can say with a 100% that I am the best multi-tasker you will ever meet. That internship taught me so much about having to move at the speed of light and juggling a million different things at once. I think even more it taught me how to work in a high pressure situation. It was New York and London so I was flying to New York, working the whole week, and flying over to London, and hitting the ground running again, and then I got to be a tourist for a day. It was the experience of a lifetime. It scared me and made me happy all at once.
HC: How did you come across that internship?
CC: My best friend was working at Wilhelmina Models in Miami at the time and had worked in Swim Week with this company and he just hit it off with the producer at the company and she offered him the chance to work at Fashion Week. He then told them how I was looking to get into the fashion industry and how I’d like to see that side of it. Later I did a Skype interview with her and I guess the Skype interview went well because the next day I had an offer!
HC: That’s amazing, congrats!
Kendall Jenner for Diane von Furstenberg at NYFW
Fun Facts
HC: Since you’ve traveled so much where is your favorite place to travel to?
CC: There is no place like New York to me. It’s the most beautiful place on earth and it’s just full of opportunity. Every time I’m there I am more and more inspired to work harder as a person. So for now that’s my favorite place to travel to but once I move there it won’t be my favorite place to travel too, but for now it is.
HC: If you weren’t pursuing Art, what do you think your major would be/life plan?
CC: When I came to college, I actually started with the intention of being a Dentist so if I wasn’t doing art I would be a dentist, but then my parents kind of sat me down one day and were like, “Are you sure that you want to be a dentist? Because we feel like your heart is somewhere else!” My parents pushed me in the direction to go for happiness instead of going for what was expected of me.
HC: What’s your favorite magazine too read?
CC: I love Rolling Stone and I really love GQ! I’m really interested in magazines that feed to both genders. Rolling Stone is for everyone and GQ, even though it is technically supposed to be a men’s magazine, there are so many articles that women can read in there and talk about things for men that they can also be involved in. I also really love the magazine XXL— it’s a rap magazine. It’s just designed beautifully! Whoever does their design is outrageous and I want to be their best friend and pick their brain every day.
HC: Being as busy as you are on campus, what do you like to do for fun?
CC: I am a professional streamer [laughs]! I have HBOGO, Hulu Plus, Netflix and Amazon Prime. I literally have every streaming outlet they offer and I stream all the time if I get the chance. I’ve been suffering lately with my streaming relationship; it’s been down the drain. I also love watching documentaries (that’s probably my biggest thing) and I obviously have some TV series I’m pretty dedicated to. I also really like to read and enjoy taking bubble baths and drinking iced coffee. Bubble baths are important.
HC: What is one documentary that you suggest for our readers to see?
CC: The Queen of Versailles! It has nothing to do with art or Versailles, and at first I watched it because I thought maybe it was an art documentary, but it is actually about this family that builds the biggest house in America and its just outrageous.
Christie’s Latest Screen Print Project
HC: You mentioned before you make screen prints. Is there anywhere our readers can purchase them?
CC: Yes! I have a website and you can buy them as is for $5 or sized and matted for $10. Not everything is on there, but I update it regularly!
HC: Last question. Where do you see yourself in five years? What is your ultimate goal?
CC: Definitely living in New York hopefully in a beautiful loft in SoHo with three cats (I already have one and I’m adding two more) working as some sort of art or creative at any major publication. I don’t care where I end up working I just want to know that it is a publication that has credibility. And of course hopefully having a steady hot boyfriend with a man bun who enjoys iced coffee and traveling as much as I do! And has a love for flannels [laughs].