Jamie Ittershagen is sprawled across a tattoo table, her scrunchie-wrapped wrist reaching out to squeeze a friend’s hand. An artist etches ink across the Colorado State University student’s ribs — the text “enjoy each day” taking shape — while a friend films the experience.

But this 5-minute video, shared on YouTube last month, served a higher purpose than simply recording a college memory.

Colorado State paid Ittershagen to create the content and edit the footage. The school then posted the video of the 18-year-old’s first tattoo on its student-run YouTube channel, hoping such intimate glimpses into the lives of real students will entice young viewers to apply to the university.

CSU’s YouTube channel, A Ram’s Life, doesn’t post the kinds of glossy videos a university public relations team might typically create, and that’s the point.

“We wanted it to be a more soft-branded approach where it doesn’t feel like the university has an agenda or that we’re putting out a specific message of the image we want people to see,” said Chase Baker, who works for CSU’s social media team.

The channel isn’t labeled as being directly connected to CSU, offering only the description, “This is life at Colorado State University, from the eyes of students themselves.”

The student-produced content follows a trio of Rams as they move into and decorate their dorm room, get lost on their way to class, screw up Kraft macaroni and cheese, explore Greek life, get emotional and make friends.

Ittershagen, Grace Crangle and Ryan Haynes are classified as CSU social media interns, each paid $13 an hour to work on their videos for up to six hours each week.

“This job was honestly like a dream come true,” Ittershagen said. “I still get confused why I get paid to do my hobby, which sounds so cheesy, but I used to work at Starbucks, where I would make people drinks, which was fun, but then I’d have to clean all night. This job is just all fun. It’s the best job I’ve ever had, and it’s hands down the best campus job.”

The gig is Baker’s creation — a venture he calls an experiment that began about a year-and-a-half ago. The 29-year-old CSU alum read a Pew Research study that reported 85% of American teens say they use YouTube — more usage than any online platform, including Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter.

Baker, an avid YouTube fan himself, thought it was time CSU start staking a claim on the most widely used online platform of its target audience — college-aspiring youth.

Rather than have Baker sit behind the camera and talk up the campus as an employee, he thought it would be most effective to deploy one of YouTube’s most popular style of videos: vlogs.

Vlogging — like blogging, but on video — breaks the fourth wall as subjects talk directly to the audience, delivering what is intended to be a non-scripted peek into their day, Baker explained.

The CSU vlogs launched in April and have garnered more than 6,000 subscribers and 643,000 views across the channel.

In one, Crangle wraps her camera’s tripod around her dorm’s bed frame, turns it on and recounts her first day of classes with inserted video footage. The details are ones you might only share with your closest friends, like how her nerves made her exceptionally sweaty that day.

Ittershagen dishes on her dorm room getting flooded, and Haynes takes his viewers on a walk through Fort Collins holiday lights.

YouTube has allowed ordinary teenagers making silly content in their parent’s houses — take Emma Chamberlain, for example — to skyrocket to stardom with millions of people glued to the creator’s every edited move and millions of dollars in advertising revenue following. It’s also a platform where many other hopeful stars who never quite hit the big time turn on their camera, take a deep breath and hope for the best.

“It’s almost like writing in your diary and publishing it online for everyone to see,” Baker said. “There are some vloggers I like to follow where it’s almost like I feel like I know that person and feel invested in their life. That’s the hope here. We want viewers to subscribe because they feel attached to Jamie and Grace and Ryan. We want them to talk about the hardships they’re going through and be very real.”

Of course, the CSU-affiliated vlogs can’t be totally unfiltered. The videos are a marketing strategy, after all, so vloggers have some restrictions on what they can capture and post.

According to the job description, there will be no:

Partying

Drugs

Underage drinking

Nudity or provocativeness

Hate speech or bullying

Obscenity, profanity, personal attacks, threats, harassment, discrimination, trolling, inappropriateness, or abusive content

Defamatory comments about any person, group, organization or belief

Promotions for personal political agendas

Promotions for personal businesses

Content filmed while driving

Baker watches all the videos before uploading them to the YouTube channel just to make sure the content is PG-13.

“I haven’t felt constrained by that at all,” Ittershagen said. “There’s nothing that I would want to make a video on that I’m not allowed to.”

Meanwhile, 20-year-old Jack Sweeney is a college vlogger at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he posts videos of himself trying to sneak into a fraternity party dressed as a girl, partying, studying, discussing drinking and safe sex.

Sweeney isn’t employed by the university, but he said he makes about $70 per video through advertising revenue.

A film major in his sophomore year, Sweeney started making YouTube videos a few months before college, mainly out of boredom, he said.

“When I got to CU, I realized I can make fun and creative videos but also give some value to these kids who are figuring out where they’re trying to go to school,” Sweeney said.

Sweeney’s videos are the first to pop up when searching “University of Colorado Boulder” on YouTube. He has more than 26,000 subscribers and plans on keeping it up.

“I spend around two hours filming and then probably 10 hours editing for each video,” Sweeney said. “It’s really hard to keep it up with school, but I definitely want to keep doing it. I have long-term goals. I’m a film major, so I’m never going to stop making videos. It’s not just a side hobby for me.”

Ittershagen watched college vlogs when she was applying to schools and enjoyed when students shared the sorts of dorm supplies they’d need, the kinds of food available on campus and what life as a student was like.

Now, she’s fielding questions about CSU from high school students who see her videos and reach out to her, asking about homesickness, Greek life and classes.

“It’s nice to see firsthand what someone is going through,” Ittershagen said. “You can ask administrators what to expect, but they’re not going to be able to give you as specific an answer as an actual student. Now I get to be an adviser to students and help them out while also documenting these memories for me and my friends and family back home to watch. What kind of campus job is like this?”