Dinhternet

No, I’m not talk­ing about Arco.

I think one of my biggest regrets in APhiO is actu­ally that I let it take over my life com­pletely. :gasp!: Did the Pres­i­dent really just say that? Hear me out… I regret it only because I know there’s so much work to be done out there in the world, and time I spend in APhiO could also be spend work­ing with other, equally needy groups on equally impor­tant causes.

I guess the way I ratio­nal­ize my choice is that with all the work that is needed around the world, each of us can cre­ate the great­est impact by work­ing at a local level first. Think of how much harder it would have been for Zorro to make a dif­fer­ence if he decided to go to Spain to do his work. Also, I think that devot­ing myself to one orga­ni­za­tion and really get­ting it in the best shape pos­si­ble for the future lead­ers is bet­ter than just putting in the vol­un­teer hours and noth­ing fur­ther with sev­eral orga­ni­za­tions. Sure, I’ll be doing good work in both cases, but I’ll also be prepar­ing them to do more good work in the future in the for­mer case.

Any­way, this is brought on by the fact that I just saw this video pro­mo­tion for VASCON. They just had the third annual national Vietnamese-American Stu­dent Con­fer­ence ear­lier this year, and I’ve missed all of them.

I want to give major props to my friends that started VASCON after attend­ing Dai Hoi Thanh Nien Sinh Vien The Gioi, or the Inter­na­tional Viet­namese Youth and Stu­dent Con­fer­ence. The inter­na­tional con­fer­ence is held every two years, and the next one will be the fifth one, mean­ing it’s been ten years since the start. I attended DH2 in Paris and DH3 in San Diego, and they were life-changing events that I will remem­ber for­ever. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it to DH5, but maybe I’ll be able to make VASCON.