Shaylin Romero is taking full advantage of the opportunities Texas Tech has provided.
If you don’t know Shaylin Romero, chances are you’ve seen her. Either on Texas Tech’s social media pages during an Instagram takeover or working an event as a Dean’s Student Ambassador for the College of Media & Communication.
Or, perhaps, as a student highlighted in the 2024 State of the University speech given by Texas Tech President Lawrence Schovanec.
If you haven’t seen her around, or don’t immediately recognize her, that’s all right. If you’re reading this article and follow Texas Tech, even if you don’t know her, there’s a good chance you’ve seen her work or heard her voice on one of the many video projects she has helped Marketing & Communications produce as an intern.
And, even if all of that still isn’t true, the chances that in the future you don’t see something Romero has worked on are pretty slim.
Over the last few weeks she’s put in work on a major documentary project for Texas Tech Public Media that should debut in 2025, and she’s taking the lead on producing a Hulu commercial for Texas Tech K-12.
Did we mention she’s still a student?
“Shaylin is a student who has taken full advantage of her college career,” said Michael Ortiz, a video storyteller with Marketing & Communication who doubles as an instructor with the College of Media & Communication. “She’s making every hour count. She took that leap of faith, on herself and her college career, to just go do it and try to make it as a media professional.
“She’s doing ‘The Great Plains Project,’ student ambassadors, interning with our office. She really has her hands in everything, which could be a detriment to her, spreading herself so thin. But she’s never seen it that way. She thinks about it like ‘How do I maximize my time here?’ And I think that’s one of Shaylin’s core strengths.”
Born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dominican parents, Romero spent the first four years of her life living in the Dominican Republic.
She moved back to New York with her mother when it was time to start school, living in tight quarters with other family members.
“My dad didn’t have his visa or residency yet,” Romero explained. “I have a lot of my mom’s side of the family, so we grew up crammed into a little two-bedroom apartment, and they still live in the same place. It's nostalgic going back. I'm excited to go back this Christmas, actually.”
A few years later, with his visa sorted out, her dad moved in with them and, as Romero tells it, was looking for ways to afford living in the U.S. What he found was the U.S. military. At 11, Romero and her family moved to Killeen, Texas, to what was then Fort Hood, now Fort Cavazos.
It is Killeen Romero considers home, and in Texas she came to understand the value of everything her parents had done for her. It’s also where she built the mentality of taking advantage of the opportunities they worked so hard to give her.
“I’ve always kind of had that drive, even in my younger years,” she said. “I was always involved in as many ways as I could be. In high school, I was student council president, but I was also my class president. So anytime that there was something that involved, like, you know, our senior whatever, I would be a part of that. But also, when it came to larger things, like prom or Homecoming, we had to do recruitment-ish events.”
On top of that, Romero jumped into an early-college program, so by the time she had a high school diploma she had an associate degree as well.
“We had to take a class called AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination – a fitting acronym for a student like Romero) for all four years, and I had the same two teachers – shout out Ms. Gilliam and Ms. Crawford – and they were kind of my mentors,” Romero said.
“Our senior year, we started talking about colleges and what we wanted to do with our lives. I mean, every year they had us do a presentation that was like, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ But senior year you’re like, ‘Man, I actually need to decide.’ And Ms. Crawford just mentioned that she had her master’s from Texas Tech. She did it online while she was in the military.”
Romero liked the idea of Texas Tech. She decided she was going to be a Red Raider.
Now to figure out the other stuff.
Jumping In
In her conversations with Ms. Crawford, Romero figured out where she wanted to go to school, but as a high school student some questions remained about exactly what she wanted to do.
Business school? That was certainly an option and, honestly, seemed like the route most people took when they were undecided. Did she want to be a teacher? Another strong possibility, particularly given the roles her teachers had played in her life. Was the communications path, one she had studied a bit in high school, her best choice?
There were many questions to be answered, but a little bit of soul searching, coupled with looking into what was available, helped her make the decision.
“I wanted something a little more creative,” she explained. “I like business, but I felt like I would get stuck behind the math and the numbers, and I didn’t really want to do that. I thought it was valuable knowledge to have, but I wanted to be more of the person creating the things the business markets out.
“Creative media industries just hit a lot of points that I wanted to have. It was interdisciplinary. I could do photography, videography, audio. There’s a possibility of taking some journalism classes. I went to Lubbock for the very first time at orientation and I fell in love with campus. And I was like, ‘Yep, this is the right decision.’ From there on, everything else is history.”
It took about a semester for Romero to settle in at Texas Tech. Not unusual, of course. Most students take a bit of time to get adjusted to their first time away from home and the rigors and flow of college classes.
What is unusual is how quickly she hit her stride after that.
During her first year on campus she applied for the adventure media course (one we’ve covered in depth over the last couple of years) and that put her on a path of, well, adventure.
“I honestly wanted to quit, like, the very first day,” Romero explained, “because that first training ride sucks. I’ve ridden a bicycle before, but I’ve never ridden that many miles on a bicycle, especially in the Lubbock wind. It was awful that day. And 30 miles is long.
“And, I don’t know, I just kind of stuck it through because there was something there, and then I just kept going and going.”
That 30-mile bike ride was just the start. A hiking class followed. Study abroad trips to Iceland and South Africa turned her into a world traveler. Earlier this fall she hit the road once again for “The Great Plains Project,” where she helped shoot a planned PBS documentary following a motorcycle ride from Mexico to Canada across the Great Plains.
Romero is quick to point out that without scholarships and the generosity of donors she wouldn’t have had many of these opportunities.
“I truly believe that without the support of donors I would not have taken advantage of opportunities like adventure media or study abroad because I would be too busy working trying to pay off school,” she said. “I have the luxury of doing the things I want to do thanks to scholarships from the college and things like merit scholarships from the university. I don’t have to stress over the financials all the time.”
She’s also become a trusted part of the Marketing & Communications team at Texas Tech as an intern.
She’s been tasked with a leading role in creating a key advertising piece for the university’s K-12 school, and Ortiz believes it’s a testament to her growth as a creator.
“I think having someone reliable in any profession is amazing,” he said. “Having someone who is reliably going to take on a task and then also execute it well, that you can trust, goes a long way. With video work there are so many moving parts, knowing you can trust that person to light it up or monitor sound, or check white-balance levels is crucial.
“So now we’re giving her the opportunity to basically shoot, produce and execute a whole commercial for Hulu and the Texas Tech K-12 program. She’s taken full range over it. She’s done the shot list. She’s done the producing on it. She’s contacted people. She’s fully producing a commercial as an intern for us.”
What’s Next?
With graduation just more than a year away – Romero will graduate in December 2025 – much like in high school, the questions have started popping up again.
And, much like in high school, the options are many for Shaylin Romero.
Thanks in part to the experiences she’s had at Texas Tech, both in her degree program and as an intern, she’ll soon enter the workforce with a level of skill and accomplishment that most new graduates in her field wouldn’t be able to lean on.
But she’s not slowing down any time soon – she’s even joined Red Raider Orientation as a captain for the summer of 2025 – and the real credit for her preparedness to enter the workforce, in whatever way she chooses, lies with her.
“Sometimes I do get to a point where I'm like, ‘Man, I’m kind of tired.’ These last couple of weeks coming back from Great Plains have been a little rough just from missing two weeks of classes,” she said. “But I just feel like it’s all worth it. I mean, I have the time now. I’m healthy, I’m capable.
“I see my parents getting older, and I feel like they have a lot of things that they wish they would have done when they were younger and I kind of want to just have no regrets. I’m going to get every cent out of college that I can. And hey, if there’s, like, an event with free T-shirts, I'll also be there, because I'm going to get every free T-shirt there is. But I just feel like I owe it to myself, and also to my parents, because they sacrificed a lot.”
While she’s facing her own set of questions before graduating next year, Romero has another graduation to look forward to this winter. Her mother is slated to earn her bachelor’s degree in accounting in December, with Romero lending as much support as possible.
“Her bachelor’s has been tough, and I have to constantly remind her that she’s very smart and capable,” Romero explained. “She sometimes feels frustrated with assignments. Her primary language is Spanish, and her English is pretty good, but she feels kind of nervous sometimes. For assignments, she’ll have to translate them from English to Spanish to make sure she properly understands everything, and then she’ll sometimes write out answers in Spanish and then translate it back to English.”
It’s a proud moment for a daughter who still thinks about the risks and hardships her parents faced for her and her brothers. Romero wants to make sure her parents are just as proud of her, and that she’s done everything she can to make sure their efforts pay off when she graduates.
“It’s been a while now, but I still feel like, you know, them choosing to move to the United States, I owe them for that,” she said.
What will that look like?
It’s hard to say right now. There’s a long-term goal of being a professor, sharing her knowledge with others. But, for now, she’s just looking to make an impact in whatever way she can.
“I know, with my degree, it’s a little bit competitive,” she said. “Everyone wants to be a filmmaker. Everyone has a camera. Anyone can take a photo, even if they just have their phone. And I think it’s things like what I’m doing in college that really set me apart, because I have more experience right out of the gate. I’m hoping that is beneficial when I start applying for jobs and maybe even a master’s program.
“My ultimate goal, wherever I go, is to give back and help others. I want to tell stories with a camera and bring more exposure to the people of the world who don’t get the opportunity to tell their stories.”