St Andrews’ Own Celebrity: A Conversation with Sejan’s Journals

The success of Sejan’s Journal has been a long time coming. First-year medicine student Sejan Vigneswaralingam has been working on content creation for years now, though the publicity of his account today is something novel. 

His journey began in 2022. “I didn't actually post anything back then, but it was a starting point for me,” Vigneswaralingam said. This was when he first began making videos that recapped his summer and chronicled his travels. “But I wouldn't post them anywhere,” he said. “It'd be like, I share it with my best friend, and that's it.”

For a while, Vigneswaralingam posted videos to YouTube, attracted to the platform because his friends and family were unlikely to use it. In the summer of his gap year, however, an unexpected endorsement from his parents triggered a change in his posting habits. 

“It got to May 2025, and I was about to go solo travelling in Asia, and my parents were actually like, ‘Oh, you know [...] you should vlog your travels and all of that,’” Vigneswaralingam recalled. “I was kind of glad they said something like that, because it gave me a natural point to go on to Instagram and then start posting.”

Since starting university in September, Vigneswaralingam has started to make content centred around life at university. If you’re prone to an evening doomscroll, I’m sure you’ve seen his account pop up. While his content spans every aspect of university life — from coursework to societies — his videos centred around study advice are inspired by Unjaded Jade, a longtime favourite of his.

“She was probably like the main sort of YouTuber I'd watched during Sixth Form, because I was watching a lot of study tips videos,” Vigneswaralingam said. The content creator inspired him due to the normalcy shown in her videos. “I would always see people like Mr Beast, or big names who were the only ones who could be on YouTube,” he explained. “When I see creators who are similar to me, who have [gone] to school, studied at university, and [are] just documenting their life, that [resonates] with me.”

As is unavoidable with social media, Vigneswaralingam was apprehensive about the reception his videos would receive. Yet his concerns were less centred around how others would perceive him, and more focused on the quality of his content. 

“It was more like, are people gonna find these videos useful?” He said. “So then I realised I gotta start from somewhere, and then work my way up, because that's how most creators do it.”

Since starting at St Andrews, Vigneswaralingam has received overwhelmingly positive feedback as his videos started to spread throughout the community. 

“When it first started last semester, it was a lot to get used to,” Vigneswaralingam said. Starting with only a few 100 followers, he thought, “There's no way that many people have seen my videos, right?”

Now, Vigneswaralingam gets stopped on the street every time he goes out. As much as the experience can be disorienting, it serves as a reminder of why he makes videos. 

“I just like that I'm actually getting feedback,” he said. “[I like] knowing that what I’m doing is helping others. That’s what I enjoy.” Vigneswaralingam receives frequent messages from fellow students, often late into secondary school, asking for advice. For him, this is an opportunity to offer the support he wished he’d received growing up — one of the reasons he started the account. 

“For me, it was really about having a space where people who were once like me, or like a younger version of me, could feel like they're not alone in struggling to fit in, or [in] certain areas of life where they're struggling,” Vigneswaralingam said. “Just knowing that there's someone out there who you can relate to is something I wish I had when I was growing up, and that's sort of what I hope to do with my channel.”

As much as Vigneswaralingam enjoys interacting with fans, he is also careful not to centre his identity around his content creation. “I don't really push too hard in promoting my content,” he said. “I've never really gone up to anyone and been like, ‘Hey, you know, I make social media content.’ I just introduce myself as me, and how I want other people to know me.”

To stop his accounts from taking over his life, Vigneswaralingam decides in advance what he will and won’t film. While big events like the Bute Medical Society’s Ball get featured on the account, much of his everyday social life remains private, especially when at home.

“There are definitely times where my family will ask, ‘Why are you not filming it?’ It's mainly to do with the fact that I just want to enjoy the moment,” Vigneswaralingam explained. “I film when I can and when I want to. The rest of the time I just try [to] enjoy being around.”

As easy as it is to get caught up studying the analytics of videos, Vigneswaralingam tries to keep his eyes off the numbers. After all, it’s impossible to predict what will go viral. “I don't know how well the video will do compared to how I think it's gonna do in my head,” he said. “There are videos where I spend a good while making them, but then they just don't do as well as I had hoped or I thought they would. Then there's some which I don't really put that much effort into, and then they just take off.”

Keeping social media as a hobby is important to Vigneswaralingam, especially while studying. “Obviously, medical school is very demanding, and medical school will be my main focus during the day,” he explained. “It's usually towards the evening, when I spend some time working on my content.” 

On top of running his account, Vigneswaralingam is engaged in an endless barrage of societies. Between karate, k-pop dance classes, golf, and tennis, Vigneswaralingam has a packed schedule. “I think it's because, transitioning from my gap year, where I wasn't really doing much, I just want to make the most of my time,” he explained.

For Vigneswaralingam, his content creation is just another way to make the most of life in St Andrews. Though some of his fans might wish otherwise, Vigneswaralingam remains steadfast in his commitment to keeping social media as a hobby, not a job. “Obviously, there [are] a lot of creators out there who were doctors or medical students who, once they became doctor[s], left medicine to focus on their YouTube channel,” he said. “But I know that I definitely do want to be a doctor and want to stick with that for the long term. Social media is just a hobby, and it's something I enjoy doing.” 

Content creation has brought Vigneswaralingam a long list of skills, as well as helped him to acclimate to the St Andrews environment. Most importantly, it brings him joy. “I love coming up with an idea and being able to execute it in a way that fits what I had originally imagined the vision to be,” he told me. 

For those chasing the high of social media success, Vigneswaralingam’s advice is simple: “I would say just to start. Honestly, I think that's the hardest part.”

Photo courtesy of @sejan_journals