Santa Monica 2020 (REVAMPED)! 🌞 — Welcome to our 2020-2021 APASA Interns!

So Gabe, how’d you think recruitment season this year went?

I mean... just look at them.

[1st weekly intern meeting 9/26 - Yi-Ann and Amy not pictured.]

Yeah. They’re pretty amazing. 

Wait Jen, we’re talking to ourselves again.

Shoot—hi everyone! I’m Jen, one of APASA’s Recruitment Directors this year.

And I’m Gabe, the other Recruitment Director this year. Jen and I just finished recruiting for APASA’s 2020 to 2021 Intern Class these past couple of weeks, and we’re ecstatic to introduce them to you.

Warning: they are fantastic.

To welcome the interns, we hosted our annual tradition of “Santa Monica” Orientation! What exactly does a random Zoom call on a Saturday evening have to do with Santa Monica? GREAT question. Typically, if we were on campus, we would kick off our upcoming year with the interns by taking a group trip along with E-Board to Santa Monica Pier! That day is always a lot of fun and a nice break from the hectic first couple of weeks of school, full of exciting games, delicious meals, and great conversations.

Due to obvious circumstances, we unfortunately couldn’t make this happen for our interns this year (sad reaccs only), but we tried our best to make orientation day still special for APASA. In a four hour Zoom call, we were able to introduce the interns to one another and to E-Board, and kickoff bonding with group speed dating. Some of them even gathered to play Among Us afterwards!

Adapting to virtual circumstances for the recruitment process has not been easy to say the least, but Jen and I are so happy with our process this year. This was the largest applicant pool we’ve had in APASA history, and also the first time we’ve done a two-round interview process in hopes of getting to know the applicants better before we chose our intern class.

Despite spending around 40 long hours over the course of two weekends reading applications, conducting interviews, and deliberating, we were so happy to see so many passionate individuals apply to be a part of APASA this year. Getting to hear each applicant’s unique story made the process go by so quickly, and we really valued getting to meet so many new faces even though the pandemic has brought us off campus.

Our group of 16 this year is a little larger than our usual number of interns, but we think that they’re going to have an amazing time working together. Going remote has made conducting meaningful programming more difficult, so we’re excited to have 16 more heads on board for APASA this year. The Intern Program has not changed in structure, but it has definitely expanded in extensiveness. The circumstances are challenging, but this is the perfect group to come up with new creative ways to continue APASA’s mission amidst a virtual semester.

Overall, while not ideal without a sunny Southern California beach in the background, Santa Monica Orientation this year was still great in that it captured the two best parts of the tradition - immaculate vibes and even more immaculate people. If this event was any indicator of what our year ahead would be like, Gabe and I are both confident that APASA as a whole is going to have an amazing next two semesters. Our full team is so excited to make this year just as memorable for the APIDA community at SC, and the two of us are so happy to have finally completed our APASA family.

To our interns (Charley Kim, Katherine Hoang, Amy La, Yi-Ann Li, Evelyn Zhang, Sarah Liang, Shreya Kashyap, Minah Yang, Sophia Lu, Maria Tsiao, Sara Zhang, Emma Hsu, Mythili Iyer, Angela Liu, Cade Sugiyama, and Koichiro Otake):

We are absolutely obsessed with you and are so excited to see you grow this year. Welcome to APASA! 💙