APASA Intern Project: Pin Your Pride

APASA’s interns end-of-year project, as told by two of our interns, So Jung An, and Katie Luo.

Pin Your Pride. Playing off of APAHF’s annual theme this year, “Proud To Be”, the 2022 APASA interns put together an interactive, community-based project prompting students and faculty alike to showcase their APIDA pride. From March 22nd through the 24th, pods of interns stood on Trousdale asking Trojans their themed question of the day. Lighthearted and introspective, each question begged for insight into individuals’ cultural identities. 

When we first brainstormed for this activity, we always kept in mind to have a fun and inclusive nature to our project. With one suggestion from Yusuf Rahman, the interns banded together to create what is now known as the “Pin Your Pride Booth.” This project catered to the whole USC community to express their pride in their cultural identity. Throughout the planning process, we collectively split the work into different committees to cover more areas in logistics, materials, graphics, and prizes. Although we thought it was smooth sailing from here, we ran into a few barriers: funding and time. Our projected date was supposed to be the end of February, but without the funding, we had to push back our project a couple of weeks. Although it was discouraging at first, the interns still kept their heads up and continued to be patient and flexible with the whole project. From late meetings to Sunday Slaypasa (aka Barbie movie marathons), we all gave our best effort to create our project to perfection. 

Spanning over three days, interns rotated in and out during what seemed like the hottest days of Spring. However, despite the grueling heat, our timing was spot on. As students walked across campus to catch their mid-day classes, we waved and greeted curious spectators. Dozens of students approached us; they asked about our stand and the prizes that sprawled across the table. “Hi! We are APASA interns!” we began, and quickly followed with “This is our intern project. Would you like to answer our question of the day?” 

Day 1: What is your favorite thing about your culture? (Ex. Food, Tradition, Etc.)

Day 2: What does your cultural community mean to you?

Day 3: I'm proud to be _____________.

Students wrote down their answers on colorful sticky notes and stuck their notes on the board. But the sticky notes were not enough, of course. How can we expect people to stick to their pride?! That’s all wrong! They must pin their pride. So, being the thoughtful interns we are, we provided students with pins to finish it off, seal the deal, or even add the cherry on top, if you will, with a pin. Surely, their pinned sticky notes would last a lifetime— or until the Cultural Arts Expo at least. Afterward, students claimed their prizes: hi-chew and cute stickers. At the end of each day, our boards were beaming with colorful paper and thoughtful insights. 

With the Cultural Art Expo a couple of weeks afterward, we had the honor of displaying our “Pin Your Pride” board during the event. Located on the left side of the TCC Ballroom, we presented all three of our boards side-by-side. As people came up to our booths, they were amused by each sticky note and also had the opportunity to attach their answers to the board. We also showcased the submitted pictures from the Google forms and saw a visual representation of people’s proudest moments. Later in the night, one of our interns announced the winner of the blue dinosaur plushie, which is now in good hands. Throughout the night, the interns had a great time interacting with guests and having a blast exploring the rest of the Cultural Art Expo. 

As the project came to an eventful close, we were content to see the fruits of our labor coming to life. We were pleasantly surprised by the amount of interaction we had. Literally stunning. We did it. Engaged with students: check! Incorporated the APAHF theme: check! Brought smiles to students’ faces: check! I think it’s safe to say that we can now rest easy knowing that hundreds of students have pinned their pride. But in all seriousness, as an intern class, our goal for our passion project was to be a simple reminder for the APIDA community to be proud of their culture. Hopefully, the APIDA Trojan community felt a little extra love those few days. 

Massive shoutout to our executive directors and recruitment directors for supporting us throughout this project, and of course, shoutout to our lovely interns for their hard work! Thank you to everyone who participated in our event, we are looking forward to seeing you at all of our other APASA events! Good-bye Besties!!