My Aggie Story is an initiative that encourages students to submit unique personal stories online to share with the Texas A&M community.
The Division of Student affairs created My Aggie Story as a way for students to share their differing Aggie experiences. Daniel J. Pugh, vice president for Students Affairs, said the idea came along after talking to former students about their experiences as A&M students.
Pugh said finding ways for current students to share their stories with others concerned him. So, Pugh met with the Division of Student Affairs team last year and discussed creating a platform for students to do just that.
“I wanted something authentically told by the students,” Pugh said. Pugh said he wanted other students to be able to relate their own stories to others as to when they felt like a true Aggie.
The creation of the project began in spring 2018 with Student Affairs helping students produce their videos. Student Affairs shared the first My Aggie Story in early September, before being published online to the Aggie’s Mom Club.
Pugh said that the video got a positive response. Aaron Zajac, a junior history major, was the subject of the first video published online on Sept. 17, 2018.
Kelli Meyer, marketing and communications graduate student and graduate assistant project manager for the My Aggie Story project, said the project aims to help students meet other students that have similar or divergent experiences.
“Our goals is that, by having this project with these stories, that you can learn about the people around you that you never would’ve met,” Meyer said.
As of February 2019, my Aggie Story has thus far published a total of 12 videos. Meyer said that the team strives to post a video every two weeks.
Sergio Garcia, a videographer for the My Aggie Story, said that each story he had produced and edited had inspired him because of the bravery of the students telling their stories.
“If that’s able to inspire me, from someone that’s an outsider in A&M, I think it can make a bigger impact to students that are in the university,” Garcia said.
Pugh said that he hopes to see more viewership in the time to come and to use the My Aggie Story project to help future, present and former students understand that the same Aggie Spirit is still alive at A&M.
“I encourage as many people as possible, if they got a story they want to be told…we want to hear it [and] we want to share to it with everybody,” Pugh said.
The project highly encourages students to self-submit their stories at the My Aggie Story website u.tamu.edu/MyAggieStory.