When junior fashion design major Maddie Young first stepped on campus at Lasell holding a Polished magazine, she never expected to one day be leading the whole organization.
Years later, Young has been named the Creative Director and is excited to bring new ideas to the club.
After learning there was an open position for this semester, Young applied for the creative director position which was followed by an interview with staff advisors. Knowing there were a couple of people in the running and that she would be away for a semester while studying abroad, Young was pleasantly surprised to learn that she had earned the position.
“Honestly some of my first thoughts were like ‘why did I get picked for this? Like, do I even deserve this?’” Young said.
Young said she vividly remembers being on shift at the restaurant she works for when she received the e-mail stating that she had been selected for the position, and that she immediately gasped, making all of her coworkers turn.
“I just felt so hopeful and excited,” Young said. “It was just such a good moment.”
While Young knew she qualified for the position, she still felt nervous about taking on such a big leadership position.
Since Young had spent the previous semester abroad, she jumped straight from stylist to creative director, which is an unconventional path for most who take on the role. Additionally, Young had to shadow the previous creative director while overseas.
“...It was definitely a challenge to kind of try to learn more about the position while I was like six hours ahead,” Young said. “So, I couldn’t really get to all the meetings. It was hard to schedule times.
It was hard kind of doing the shadowing, and then it’s definitely been a big step up from just being in the styling team...”
Despite this adjustment, Young said that her staff has been very helpful during this transition period for her.
“...the team is really, really supportive and there’s a lot of people that have been on Polished for a while, we have a lot of seniors,” Young said. “They’re very experienced, so I have support around me and I do feel pretty prepared...”
As Young steps into the new role, she is hoping to bring new ideas to the staff, and interact more between the different teams on the magazine.
“I just hope to bring a lot more collaboration throughout the teams and sustainability and kind of genderless fashion,” Young said. “I kind of want to bring those ideas into it. And I think I kind of want to work with a lot of the underclassmen coming in because I know I was on the magazine as an underclassman, and I just think it’s good to have new, fresh ideas.”
Young said that the magazine is set to come out on April 25, which is the day of Symposium, and that she is looking forward to the next chapter of Polished.