Maybe you couldn’t tell by my last name, but I’m an Asian American woman. Vietnamese, to be specific, but not that it made much of a difference for me growing up. There weren’t a lot of Asian people in my life aside from my family. Most of my friends were white, my teachers were white, the people I held lame, part-time jobs with were white. Growing up, I never really minded it that much. Every once and a while there’d be the classic microaggression or stereotypical racist joke from people I didn’t care about anyway, but overall it was something I think I handled with grace.
I think it goes without saying that, regardless of all this, I still love all my friends from high school. Sure, there were some things they would never quite understand, but my Asian-ness and their whiteness certainly never stopped any of us from pouring our hearts out to each other or complaining about AP Calculus.
It was something that seemed normal to me, going to predominately white schools in predominately white towns. I learned to live with it, even though there were some days where I felt embarrassingly out of place. People didn’t always get it—even other Asian people, sometimes. There was one girl, Vietnamese like me, that called me a “fake Asian” during my freshman year of high school because I didn’t know how to speak the language and because my parents didn’t own a nail salon.
Honestly, I wish I was making this up. Sometimes, it feels almost as if there is some competition between Asian American people about who could be the most Asian and a competition between everybody else about who could be the whitest. Growing up, I always seemed to fail at both.
When I came to Florida State, I knew that joining the Asian American Student Union was on the top of my to-do list. I had no idea what I was going to think about it. Four committees under the Asian American Student Union later, I have thoroughly been sucked in and have yet to be spit out, and I mean that in the best way possible. I don’t think I would’ve gotten through my first semester had it been for AASU.
At the first general body meeting for AASU last semester, I remember feeling so starstruck at just how many Asian people were there. In the Student Services Building, at that moment, there were more Asian people than I had ever seen in a single room that wasn’t for a wedding or family reunion. And to think—I went to school with all these people! I could see them in my classes, or walking around campus, working out at the Leach, or (dare I say) studying at Strozier. Even today, I still have no words for what I felt walking into that room that day.
I went to that meeting by myself. Sure, I could’ve brought any number of friends regardless of whether they were Asian or not—it isn’t like any of the student unions operate on a closed-door policy, but still. I showed up alone, but I didn’t leave alone. Within the first 15 minutes of the meeting, I met people that I connected with almost instantly—we had similar backgrounds, similar upbringings. We made similar jokes about being the token Asian person in their friend groups at school. It felt like I had stumbled into an alternate universe.
These weren’t people that I met once and never saw again—these were people that I actively became friends with. These were people I’d end up on committees with, going to parties with, going out for lunch or boba tea with, playing Pokémon Go with. These were people that later became friends.
So, this is my long-winded way of telling you that you should join a student union organization. And I don’t mean “join” in that small sense where you go to a few meetings throughout the semester and tack it onto your resume. I mean that you should pick one that speaks to you, regardless of how much you use the title to describe your own identity, and you should actively try to get involved in it. Attend general body meetings and explore their affiliate organizations. Join a committee (or four, if you’re like me) and make an active contribution by putting your ideas for the organization on the table.
Would I have made such important friendships if I hadn’t joined the Asian American Student Union? Probably. It isn’t like I haven’t made friends outside of AASU, and it’s certainly not the case that I haven’t found other, also very meaningful, involvements. But I think the student unions exist not only as a place to find friends you connect with, but also as a place to find yourself, as cheesy as that sounds. There are a million different reasons to join a student union organization. People join to find where they fit into Florida State, into the world, into their own community of identities that they might’ve never known about before. Some people do it to get one degree closer to Stephanie Lee—not that I’m speaking from personal experience. Who am I to judge?
Joining the Asian American Student Union has changed my life in ways that I can’t even begin to describe, all within my first semester (and change) of college. So, if I’m in any position to give other people advice, it would be this: Join a student union organization. You never know where it might take you.
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