Finding Your Community

Transcript

Now let’s head over to the Student Community Center and meet Alexander. They’re a junior with a multiplicity of cultures in their background and a double major ahead of them. That’s international relations and sociology, organizational studies. They’re also a UC Davis tour guide. So they definitely know this place backwards and forwards. They’re gonna talk to us about what it’s like to get involved and find your community at UC Davis. Okay Alexander, it’s all yours. Please take it away.

– Thanks Alex, who me, like this? Naturally, if you ask little ol’ me Alexander, what life is like on campus, well darling, you’re gonna make me reminisce and reminisce we shall. Coming from a big city, I thought to myself, I was at campus, no further cows going to allow me to live the dreams that I want to have. Soon enough though, I found places that I didn’t know I’d be calling home today in my journey to be involved, I went to the fantastic Involvement Fair in 2018. Table to table, my feet grew restless honey, but soon enough, I found the table in VSA, otherwise known as the Vietnamese Student Association. This club struck a chord because of the sense of culture and family this club brought. Coming from a multicultural background, being Cambodian, Vietnamese, Mexican and Cuban, I wanted to explore my multiple ethnic identities and this organization space and VSA affirmed that. Now I’m serving as the treasurer and former culture show director of VSA, where I got to build stories around Vietnamese-American lives. If that isn’t a full circle moment, I don’t know what is. Culture Show was the event that made me fall in love with VSA because of the way the entire club comes together to put on a production with a script, dance teams and performances, but ambitious Alexander did not stop there. I applied as a tour guide. Now I walk backwards with a bright smile and a bright personality telling people just like yourself, why Davis has become my home away from home. And of course it doesn’t stop there. When you have a face like this and a soul like mine, I paused my reminiscent journey at the Student Community Center, where I got to work this past year at the Cross-Cultural Center as a mixed heritage community coordinator, working alongside students scholars and staff on creating holistic programming, such as welcome week events, mixers, and workshops. It is with the Cross-Cultural Center that not only was my queerness, but my culture identities were both affirmed and celebrated. I often visited the LGBTQI Resource Center and the Student Recruitment Retention Center, where I was able to fall in love with this program known as Southeast Asians Furthering Education, otherwise known as SAFE. This group of lovely human beings cherish every single moment and love the fact that they get to serve the Southeast Asian community. Everyone always asks me, Alex, what is there to do on campus? And I recently learned the answer. While others may look for opportunities, Aggies create their own opportunities. And UC Davis has the potential to make any opportunity happen, back to you, Alex.

– Wow, Alexander, your super power of making people smile is no joke, thank you. That’s an amazing story. I am so glad you found not just a campus, but a community. And I love your closing thought. Create your own opportunities. That is certainly words to live by. Thanks again, Alexander. Great job.