The “Me Too” movement. The Climate Survey. Hearing horrific and graphic stories of sexual assault. Being a woman myself. These are just some of the reasons I am now heavily involved with educating others about sexual assault. For years, I wanted to find a way to make an impact in relation to sexual assault. Then Project IX, the student-led initiative to combat sexual assault on campus, was created and allowed me to start this journey. I loved attending the Project IX lectures and talking with my Community and Culture team. For someone as involved as I was, I started to notice that I was unfamiliar with the sexual assault resources on campus or how to report or what to do in that situation. I felt clueless and wondered how many students were also not aware of these important things. I wanted to create a comprehensive sexual assault resource guide that was informative, concise and engaging. I decided to reach out to Meredith Smith and discuss my idea. After our initial meeting, it took me almost one and a half months to make an outline for the guide. I severely delayed this process due to my summer classes. Once I finished the outline, I showed Meredith and now I had to fill out the outline. I scanned through the student handbook, Title IX website and outside community resource websites to gather information. Meredith and her co-worker Julia looked through it and approved it. The next step was working with a graphic designer to make the book. So far, it seemed smooth sailing. Then, as I waited for Meredith to come back in town, I decided to reach out to a student to assist with the design process. She showed me a design tool called Canva and mentioned she could send me some ideas. I fell in love with Canva and went immediately home and started making potential book designs for fun. I became addicted and made more and more pages. A part of me thought it would be cool for me to design the whole book on my own but with my demanding summer classes, I knew I could not. A couple of days later, I showed Julia and another Title IX intern my work. Julia said “Keep going!”. I was taken aback. I went home and began visualizing and piecing together different templates and elements. Sometimes I would spend up to five hours at a time designing two or three pages.

My inner-perfectionist kicked in, and I would pour over every detail I added. While the design process was fun, I had to isolate myself often to get my work done. I think my friends and roommates thought I was ignoring them and not wanting to hang out, but in reality, I had to work on my guide. Sometimes, I could not sleep because of my resource guide.