My Wild Weekend in Arizona

 

This is a long overdue post but a few weeks ago I took a road trip to Arizona with an organization I joined, AIESEC, for their regional conference known as West Coast Fall RoKs 2013.

First off, "AIESEC is the global youth network impacting the world throughleadership development experiences. AIESEC has been facilitating youth leadership activities as well as international internships & volunteer experiences for over 65 years, developing a global learning environment across 124 countries & territories."

In my own words, AIESEC focuses on global exchange to give students a valuable experience to travel and volunteer/intern abroad. As AIESEC members, we are responsible for receiving and sending out students to help give them an enriching life experience. We are the largest student run organization in the world, and some of our many responsibilities include convincing companies to hire interns from foreign countries to help their business, recruit students who want to volunteer/intern abroad specific to their major and location, match students from other countries to companies' specific job descriptions, find housing and making the intern feel at home here in the U.S., managing multiple budgets to fit certain needs, etc. We do have a professional side of AIESEC which practices real life business and leadership skills, but as a club, we are like a family. We want to work towards a common goal: peace and fulfillment of human's potential. 

The conference over weekend with AIESEC was definitely memories to cherish for a lifetime. It was cool because we got to connect with AIESEC chapters from other schools such as SLO, ASU, UCD, SDSU, and Cornell so I feel like my network has expanded at such a greater scale. I even roomed with a student from Germany who is part of the AIESEC chapter there! It's so inspiring to see how AIESEC brings together the youth to give students a chance to enhance their business and leadership skills and really make a difference in people's lives; that is just awesome. The topics we learned during the retreat was very technical specific to AIESEC, but it was enriching and inspiring to say the least. For me specifically, I spent 5 hours learning how to sell AIESEC to companies and how things needed to get done after the contract is signed, etc. What was also pretty cool about this this retreat was I think I found one of my passions in life and that is with Sales/Marketing. Practicing how to sell AIESEC to companies and the process behind everything lets me sort of visualize a career in that sort of field. I'm definitely interested in the psychology behind of what makes people do what do in a business aspect so West Coast RoKs allowed me to have this opportunity. I partnered up with next semester's president Imran to my first sales meeting with a guy from Juniper Networks and I just found out how the power of communication really is. Even if I don't pursue a career in Sales, it's a great skill to have regardless of your major and I find it quite enjoyable thus far. 

This blog post was a bit lengthy, but in short, I'm glad I joined this wonderful organization. I hope that with AIESEC, I can change people's lives and one day go on my own exchange.