I’d never thought I would come to the day where I would feel so at home and so out of place at the same time.
I started participating in UVSA-Midwest my sophomore year of college and vividly remember how I got there and which keynote truly inspired me. I was EVP for VSA UIUC at the time when Thuc Nguyen (Anh Thuc for most people) stalked me on Facebook to convince me to go to VIA-1. It was so long ago so I don’t remember the specifics but I do remember feeling embarrassed, riled and empowered because of one keynote speaker – Vinh Tran. In his keynote, he mentioned that as Vietnamese Americans who say we want to help with the community – that it’s mostly all talk. That one keynote sparked so many questions and fueled the beginning of my community service path. Since then, I ran for treasurer and stayed on the current Board of Advisors.
Since the end of my term, I have periodically come back to UVSA Midwest leadership retreats and VIA-1s to be a presenter or workshop facilitator. All the previous ones, I would come back with a group of alums so it has always felt the same. This time around, I came to a sea of young faces just eager for someone to make an impression and barely any alums – the culture shock right? I felt a weird sense of discomfort since this was the first time where I didn’t know the majority of the members (and they all looked 12) plus conducting a financial workshop (who like to talk numbers right). Talking money, in my experiences when I was treasurer, was always tough. It’s a hard topic to try to engage members with especially if I want to have it in a more conductive and engaging atmosphere. Normally, I would do board game format, debate format, small groups – but this time I just had my presentation. I blasted Shake It Off at the beginning of the workshop so to not be boring and then addressed the 20 odd something people who I assumed were forced into this workshop and asked what they know. Surprisingly, this group was not only funny and asked questions, some of the people actually engaged and felt that they learned something! I had one participant tell me “… you kind of crushed my dreams but it was a good reality check.” (Shameless plug: if you’re curious about why he said that, join our financial literacy workshop webinar in a couple of weeks! I’m the last one!)
The experience was not just the retreat alone but also having the opportunity to connect to the current UVSA Midwest leadership was one of a kind. I was able to facilitate a mini workshop that I hoped was meaningful and sustainable. Being able to just be myself and have real talk with these passionate Midwesterners have been a pleasure and filled with heart tugging moments.
It was an interesting experience to come back to the place that inspired you to begin your journey and be in the place where you look up to. I don’t know if I was able to make that strong of an impact as what Vinh had to me but I would like to think that the workshop helped out the attendees in some form or another.
It’s funny how in hindsight you always think of all these lessons can be learned if you really thought about it in the moment. But I guess it wouldn’t be called hindsight then. My lesson learned during this retreat was that no matter where we are currently or will be, we can always come back to one another because that’s what family do.
