010 - Sean's Year in Review

Has it really only been a week and a half since the school year ended?

For me, this has been an amazing year of changes, of a little "struggle", but ultimately a year of amazing AMAZING growth. I remember walking into our first meeting, expecting 30-40 people and instead finding a room of 75. We ran out of food faster than we could have imagined, had activities that were fun yet impractical with the number we aggregated, and in general had a great two hours of organized chaos that would, I think, set the mood for the rest of the year.

I found myself growing into my role as one of the board members in this organization, and I'm sure the other new board members found themselves in similar situations. As a publicity chair who was doing too much for his own good both academic and extracurricular, I will admit that it was a little overwhelming. When you have an exam the day after a flier design needs to go to print, it's hard to judge just what the priority is, but everything went fine in the end. The lack of sleep and intense planning paid off in successful events where I found myself able to meet new members and take leadership roles I would never have had otherwise.



Fall came and went, but not without leaving its mark. We had a Keiro event that may or may not have been blogged about earlier on that I think really set itself apart from other events that we've done this year. It really gave us the opportunity to go out into the community and actually do something. I know on a personal level it was an amazing opportunity as I have had family in Keiro, so to give back to this institution that has done an amazing service to our community was awesome. It was also cool to see everyone on board working so hard towards it...I could really tell that as a team we all had this level of commitment that was needed to run a successful year.

This showed through again in the AMAZING week that was Week of Remembrance. I can't even begin to describe how amazed I was with how this week went. Our screening last year had an attendance of 10. This year, it had 75. That says something...to be able to get so many people in one room and then to educate them in their own terms on what we're all about and why those 4 years mean so much was rewarding for me as I'm sure it was for all of us. I'm looking forward to getting back to Manazanar next year.

And then. It became CN crunchtime.

...crap.

If fall seemed heavy on sleepless nights and hard deadlines, the spring dwarfed it. Dance practices until 12 (on top of my other dance commitments, meaning 5 day dancing weeks at some points), working with Victor on coaching the cast, fliers, promotional materials, e-mails to everyone ever, and Facebook maintenance. Craig, Victor, and Penny pretty much lived on my cell phone during the month leading up to the show, making sure I had enough money to do what I needed and making sure I had the support of the board in the decisions I was making to promote.



After two months of straight craziness, however, the night came. And it was amazing. When Penny and Victor went out on stage to welcome the audience...I found myself at a bit of a loss of words. While the cast and crew watched from backstage, I took a step back to take all this in. This was the culmination of a crazy idea we never thought we could pull off, the true measure of what our board was able to accomplish. All the sleeplessness, all the stress, all the injury (well...at least my injury which consisted of inadvertently getting spraypaint in my eye, requiring me to wear an eyepatch for a couple of days) was leading to this crazy 2 and a half hour show that I am proud to have been a part of and still in awe of. It was truly the highlight of my experience at USC and I think it will be the defining experience of my academic career.

Incidentally, I have started writing the script for next year so there is going to be another one next year fer shurr...

After CN there was this kind of emptiness. Soon that emptiness would be filled with studying for finals and other end of the year activities, but nevertheless that week after all was said and done...I don't really know what happened. We had our Nikkei banquet and we had our final goodbyes while packing and moving out, but even now it feels like something is missing. A kind of closure to the whole experience that I suppose I am getting as I write this entry.

I want to thank everyone for giving me the time of my life on board this year. As your humble publicity chair I don't want this to sound like some academy award acceptance speech, but as a person who was losing hope in the Asian American student population as a place of discussion and growth, this organization and how it has changed has given me hope again that we are not an apathetic generation and that we do care about where we came from. I am proud that we are so diverse in membership and leadership, I am proud that we have made a concerted effort to reach out to the community, and I am proud that we are rebuilding the legacy of what was once the largest APA student organization campus.

As of our transition retreat two weeks ago I am no longer a board member, but I wish the new board the best of luck in what I'm sure is going to be an amazing amazing year. I'm looking forward to coming back in January to see how much we've grown as a family in the semester that I'll be in Hong Kong.


2k out.

- Sean