VSA’s Gather for Tet Show: Their President’s Perspective

Despite being a relatively new organization, VSA hosted a large Lunar New Year show, which they called the Gather For Tet Show. From fantastic performances to a large-scale betting game, the event was spectacular. Behind the scenes though, many people worked tirelessly for hours, days, months to pull off such a smooth show that lasted three to four hours. Amazed by the event, I had to interview the person running the whole thing, VSA’s own president, Kimmy Huynh. 

When asked about herself, Kimmy tried to say that she was “a mess,” but one look at her planner would say otherwise. She has her whole week scheduled out, from board meetings to self-care. Some more information on Kimmy: “I am a senior in computer science. I’ve been involved in VSA since I was a freshman cause that’s when it was established [in 2019], so I was on the first eboard, so I joined as the secretary and moved through the ranks.” When describing her role in the organization, she jokingly said it’s to, “boss people around.” While Kimmy tried to make it sound like she is a mean boss, you can tell that she is grateful for the people around her, calling them her “trusted people” who would “work without any complaints, even at two in the morning.”

Kimmy then described what the Gather For Tet Show was. “It is our first attempt at a big show to celebrate the Lunar New Year, even though it was a month late. For the past few years we had semi-big events to celebrate Lunar New Years, but this year we can use this as a show of our own. Other VSAs also do what they call culture shows with different themes, so it’s nice that we can finally have a show.”

Wanting to know more about what it was like to run such a big event, I asked Kimmy about it. “Stressed,” Kimmy said. “Honestly, I wasn’t stressed at first, for like the first three months, but then we got our budget really late. We submitted it in November, but we didn’t get it until mid to late February, so you really don’t have anything to do but rehearsals. But then we suddenly got the budget and we had all these things to buy and all these contracts to sign.” This is when the realization that the show is actually happening hit Kimmy. “So [the day of the show] we got the room around 10:00AM, but we probably didn’t get there until like 1:30PM. We were all up early though, prepping for the show. We had to finish some last minute logistics and I had to print out a thick stack of papers, and just run around and grab things to make sure we had everything. We were literally running around from 9:00AM to 1:30PM, when we got there. Then we had to start rehearsal from 2:00PM to 5:00PM, then we got food and started to prepare for the opening.” 

During the event, there were five dance performances by VSA, KoDAC, and IsoDynamic. Kimmy was glad that these other groups performed also, saying, “…they were really nice to agree to dance with us and their dance is always so good too.” They also had, “…a food station, a photobooth, a betting game with a hundred plus people, which was a little chaotic. We also had two mini games, but since we started a little late we had to just get rid of one of them, but it’s okay because we can use it some other time.” During the event, the dice landed on “deer” every round, which is crazy. I asked Kimmy if the dice was weighted, but it wasn’t. She said it somehow ended up that way by chance. 

One of the performers from the show was Kimmy herself, who participated in two dances. “I rehearsed for about six hours a week. Near the end we tried to have full run throughs, so it was pretty rough. Like we had practice almost every other day.” Before this though, Kimmy didn’t have any dance experience, saying, “When I was in fifth grade my dance moves consisted of circling my body in a circle with my arms.” Kimmy commended others (like Linh) for the amount of time they spent practicing too, dancing in multiple dances while also choreographing too. She also mentioned that she was shocked by others while rehearsing. “I was so surprised because when we were dancing some people that I didn’t know that were good at dancing before were actually really good.”

Overall, Kimmy thought that the night went very smoothly. “We barely had any hiccups. Maybe before the show there were some rough times, but during the show everything went together pretty smoothly. There were also some elements that surprised us. Like we didn’t expect the registration people, Dea and Eric, to put in the people with their betting attempt number so it actually made it so easy for us to go through the betting game because everything was already sorted. Luckily we didn’t run into any sound or technical difficulties, except the one time the PowerPoint didn’t move the slide. But you know, that’s not a big deal.”

One thing that truly surprised Kimmy was the massive amount of people who came to the event. “We did expect that many people would come, so I think we were a little unprepared for almost two hundred people because we actually only prepared for about one hundred people. We got food for one hundred fifty, but it wasn’t enough.” When asked about the atmosphere, Kimmy said, “It was very nice. The audience was welcoming and were actually interested in the show cause when we were dancing we could feel people make noises like ‘ooohhh’. I think the reactions showed that they were really interested. And when people participate in all the games and stuff it feels nice because people are appreciating the hard work you put in, even to just make the game. I just feel like it was a nice environment. I feel like a lot of people enjoyed it with their friends.” 

Although the Gather For Tet show is finished, VSA is always planning their next event. “We are actually planning for a big field day. It’s going to be in late April or beginning of May, before finals. It’s gonna be a large-scale out-door event. We want to invite the other organizations that are interested in doing this event. It’s going to be a charity type of event where each team has a number and each person pays one or two dollars and they will have a charity that they represent. Whoever wins the field day can take all the money and donate it to the charity they picked. It’s all thanks to Elijah, it was his idea.” 

If the field day event has as much planning as the Gather For Tet show, then I know that it will be great fun. Special thanks to Kimmy for taking the time out of her busy schedule to do this interview. Thank you to the rest of the eboard and volunteers too, for putting together such an amazing event.