When I first came to the University of Cincinnati, I was overwhelmed with the amount of organizations available for me to choose from. At the organization fair, I walked around to all of the different tables, reading the posters and meeting the members of different organizations. When I came to the South Asian American Student Association, or SAASA, table, I immediately felt connected to the organization’s mission and goals of spreading awareness of South Asian cultures and bringing everyone together through different events and meetings. As a Pakistani American, I wanted to not only be able to share my culture with other students on campus, but also wanted to learn more about other South Asian countries and traditions I was not aware of. I quickly signed my name up on the laptop at the SAASA table and added myself to the organization’s mailing list. When I showed up to the first meeting, I was able to get out of my comfort zone and meet so many new people which are now some of my closest friends. 

   Knowing that I wanted to expand SAASA, I ran for Co-President. With my past experience as an executive board member for SAASA, I was aware of the responsibility and work that comes with being a leader. However, throughout my experience as co-president, I realized that previously I had definitely underestimated all of the work that comes with the position. Along with my co-president, Pallavi, we led an executive team of 8 other members. Being co-president helped me immensely with my leadership skills, taught me how to plan large scale events, how to work with a team, how to communicate effectively, how to deal with conflict, and public speaking. 

     Through my experience as a president, I quickly learned that the most important aspect of working with a team is good communication. One challenge that I dealt with was having a member on my executive board not doing her assigned role on time which caused issues with planning and advertising our events. I realized that the best way to deal with this type of conflict is to talk to the person directly and understand what is going on to explain why they were not doing their role instead of attacking or getting angry at them. For the future I told her that it was really important for her to communicate with me and tell me in advance if something came up or she wasn’t able to do her role for some reason, and that in that case the rest of our team would definitely be able to help. I think that this challenge was really important for me to learn from because with my future career, I will be working with a team every day, and it is very important to maintain accountability while also having constant communication.

     Not only did this experience teach me the importance of communication, but it also taught me how to plan large events and work closely with my team. SAASA puts on 5 large events every year: Luau, Garba, Fall Formal, Mock Sangeet, and Holi. I had never set up events at this scale before, so it took a lot of learning through trial and error for our first event. With over 500 students showing up to our events, we were able to reach a very large scale of people from all different cultures and backgrounds and were able to bring everyone together. With so many people coming to our events, my team had to work very closely together and adapt to any changes that came about before or during the events. I was able to learn how to stay organized, how to divide up tasks, how to plan itineraries, and overall how to make events fun and entertaining for others. SAASA helped me become more informed about other South Asian countries, about different religions, traditions and holidays, while simultaneously being able to share my Pakistani culture with others as well. I was truly able to find a community of people that I connect with, and this made my transition into college from out of state so much easier. I plan to carry everything that I have been able to learn from this experience into my future and career.