LOS ANGELES — Lighting is everything to Gabrielle Robinson.

Adjusting two bright softbox lights in the space behind her navy blue sofa — the area in her apartment she’s designated her “studio” — she prepared to film an unboxing video.

On this day in mid-February, Robinson, 21, propped her camera in the nook of the back of her sofa in order to film the short video of herself opening the package sent to her from the short-form video app TikTok, which contained pink and black swag embellished with the company’s logo.

“Light’s obviously the most important part,” the University of Southern California senior said as she knelt on a white shag rug, wrapping her pink manicured nails around her iPhone. “If you don’t have good lighting, like, what do you have?”

The apartment is set up as the perfect backdrop for the social media videos and posts that Robinson, a paid TikTok ambassador at USC, creates. The white walls are decorated with the words “Good Vibes” formed by a string of purplish, blue LED lights, while another string of white lights glimmered around the perimeter of the ceiling.

TikTok is just one of approximately five ambassadorships Robinson has accrued since getting serious about content creation two years ago. In that time, she has built a social media presence, from which she earns enough money to offset some of her college expenses.

At USC, social media influencing and content creation are more than just a hobby for a select group of students — it is seen as a viable career path. While there is no major that focuses on this growing multibillion-dollar industry, USC is ahead of the curve in creating curriculum to bring influencing into the world of academia. The school offers an Influencer Relations class within the school of communications and an on-campus social media influencing club called Reach.

Robinson hopes that one day she can parlay her side gig into a full-time career and she’s well on her way, thanks to the guidance and support from her peers in Reach who’ve already helped her grow her brand.

“Reach has given me a crazy amount and a lot of opportunities in the social media space,” Robinson told NBC News. “I’m a college student first and foremost, but everything circles back to Reach for me.”