Santa Monica 2023 - Welcome APASA Interns! 🏖️

by APASA Co-Recruitment Directors, Cody Chen and Lily Liu

In typical RD fashion (AKA like Anjali and Katie), this post is arriving months late to our blog. Recruitment was an arduous, exhausting, grueling, laborious couple of weeks at the beginning of our semester, but looking back (and I suppose, even then), we knew it would all be worth it to find a wonderful class of interns for this year.

As much as we expected, and maybe even more, recruitment was a chaotic, yet rewarding experience for both of us, but I (and Lily) couldn’t be more grateful for the people we met, the lessons we learned, and the intern class we got from it all… and yes, just like our own RDs, we can also admit this blog is two months late, but all that means is there is just that much more to reflect on and be grateful for. Lucky you and lucky me (if senior Cody is reading this, hi… it’s finally your time to reminisce)

Looking back on the summer, I distinctly remember our first meeting (on FaceTime), sitting down and realizing just how much we had ahead of us. Looking at our list of meetings, deadlines, and to-dos was both an “uh oh” moment and one of excitement. We knew we wanted to make this next year a special one, and it all started with our work during the summer. So, we got to work.

Our process began early on, with our theme coming together pretty quickly at the beginning of the summer. Once again (because we can’t emphasize it enough), a huge thank you to Ashley and Joanna (our Co-Graphics Directors) for bearing with our constant meetings throughout the summer. Our inspiration ranged from Barbie: Mermaidia x Avatar, the Way of Water to The Lion King before we settled on Cody’s suggestion of Studio Ghibli.

With this theme in mind, Lily came up with our recruitment slogan (“Imagine the APASA-bilities”), and here (at least for me), it started to feel real.

2023-2024 APASA Interns! (not pictured: Katelyn)

Although we were meeting across time zones, traveling, and working internships with constantly changing schedules, it was fun to see each other in various places doing different things throughout the summer and listening to Cody’s thrilling updates on his internship at Northrop Grumman, contributing to their advancements in military technology (kidding?).

Because we had meetings throughout the summer, I enjoyed seeing where Lily would be in each of our meetings. In one meeting, Lily was in a cafe in Asia, and in another meeting a couple later, she was lounging back watching the beautiful sunset on Catalina… crazy. Speaking of traveling…

We also filmed a recruitment video, which I think had a pretty cool concept where each of us would film clips from the different parts of Asia we both happened to be traveling to in line with our theme of “APASA-bilities”. Due to certain circumstances, that video was not released, but I think Cody and I are better off for it. Agreed.

Cody and I loved our intern experiences, and we studied that 15-page long transition document from Katie and Anjali to learn more about what they had been working on behind the scenes and how the process of recruitment worked. Our first meeting (May 25, 2023) covered our vision of the next year in APASA, from what we were looking for in applicants (a car) (just kidding, I’ve yet to successfully get a ride from one of them yet) to how we envisioned shadowing and intern passion projects. We planned out the entire recruitment process during the summer, and all that was really left for us to do when we returned to campus in August was follow the plans we had already made.

While it was a lot of work and definitely stressful at times, planning recruitment will always be a highlight of college for me. It was so rewarding to work alongside Lily crafting the “perfect” recruitment process according to our vision and the experience we wanted to curate. Even more, we knew all of this work would be worth it in the end… our wonderful intern class was just around the corner.

But first, came recruitment. As Lily said, throughout recruitment, we were pretty much just following the plans we set for ourselves during the summer. From our very first recruitment Info Session to hours of interviews and deliberation, it was such an amazing experience getting to know each and every one of the students interested in the intern program, and we are grateful for the time and effort put into our application and recruitment process! With recruitment wrapped up, we… finally… had our intern class!

And so that brings us to Santa Monica, our first outing with our new intern class! Cody and I bought Spudnuts before meeting all the interns together for the first time on the Great Lawn. We made them do icebreakers for forty minutes (ID swaps and blind drawings) before letting them run off through Trader Joe’s in search of snacks (that represent them) to bring for the day. We walked over to Tommy Trojan, where E-Boarders and interns met for the first time before making our way to the Expo station to go to Santa Monica.

After months of planning and hours of recruitment, this first meeting on the Great Lawn was (low-key) surreal. Amidst the nervous excitement and organized chaos, we enjoyed seeing our new interns all together in one place, and although I still had much to learn about them, this moment already felt incredibly rewarding. It was finally time for us to really get to know the wonderful interns we would have throughout the rest of the year ❤️

At Santa Monica, everyone introduced themselves and we played a couple of games with each other (with even a very mild round of Hot Seat) before sending them off on a super fun scavenger hunt across the beach that everyone enjoyed. Yup. After that was finished, we split up for dinner. Personally, I went to Kazunori for some hand rolls, did a little shopping, and got boba before heading back with my group, tired but happy from a fun and rewarding day that we had worked towards for months.

My group went to Silverlake Ramen and ended up taking up half the seats in the restaurant (we were so lucky they had enough seats for all of us). Through conversation over warm bowls of ramen, we were finally able to sit down and talk to one another. Afterwards, we explored Downtown Santa Monica, checked out some shops, and some of us (including me) even got piercings. Yup, isn’t that crazy? This was incredibly spontaneous, but it’ll definitely be something I remember for a long time (thanks Ashley). Even though it was the first day getting to know each other, here we were getting new ear piercings together. I guess you really never know what fun is waiting for you whenever you’re with APASA (if you’re a student reading this because you’re interested in applying for APASA, this is your sign to apply).

Being on the other side of Santa Monica as an RD, it was exciting seeing E-Board interact with our new interns through the games and activities we planned for them. As an intern last year, I remember feeling nervous stepping out of my comfort zone but also very at ease with the rest of the people in APASA. Everyone was so friendly, encouraging, and genuine, so it felt so natural and comfortable running around on a scavenger hunt or acting as a wheelbarrow in a relay race. This mixed bag of feelings was something I wanted to recreate for our interns, showing them just how welcoming and homey APASA really is. Hopefully… it worked.

Wow. I can’t believe it’s basically already been an entire semester since recruitment. Time really does fly by.

It’s been an unforgettable and incredible experience so far with a great group of interns, and we’re looking forward to another semester with everyone.

Love,

Cody and Lily

USC APASADecember 22, 2023