When news broke that Mount Michael would turn towards online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many students were unsure about what to do with their plethora of free time.

Many spent their days inside playing video games or streaming Netflix, but Phong Le ‘21 found a new hobby in Youtube. During the pandemic, Le began developing videos for his Youtube channel to help pass the time.

“I was looking for something to do in my free time and that’s when I decided that I should give Youtube a try,” he said. “I started to look up ways to edit videos and I just began from there.”

Le began slowly starting with short videos shot solely on his phone and then started to mix in other ways of taking videos.

“I bought a drone because I thought it might be a really cool way to shoot some videos,” he said. “It was working great at first as I was getting some great shots, but I accidentally crashed it, so I have to be a little more careful now.”

Through self-advertising and student help, Le has helped his channel’s view count grow exponentially. While the original videos began by having only tens of views, the more recent videos view counts have been in the hundreds.

“I have started to ‘collab’ with other kids from our grade and I think that that has really helped to grow my channel,” Le said. “I’m hoping to be able to work with more people down the line.”

One of the students that he has been working with is fellow classmate, Joseph Chouinard ‘21.

“I’ve been able to see firsthand just how hard Phong has been working on his channel and how much he cares about it,” Chouinard said.

Although his primary audience has been the current juniors at Mount Michael, Le has also gained fans from outside the class of 2021. David Drews ‘22 has also become a huge fan of the channel.

“Someone told me that Phong had started a Youtube channel and I decided to check it out,” Drews said. “I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but you can tell Phong works hard on his channel and I felt he did a good job.”

Although Le is happy with how far he has come in the short time, he hopes that he will be able to continue creating quality content.

“I want to keep bringing new people into my videos to keep them exciting,” Le said. “I want to be able to keep doing this long after this virus ends.”