A Little Dive Inside My Freshman Year at the AAC

Friday nights were always my favorite. During my freshman year, the amount of workload I had was far less than that amount I have now. Maybe it was due to the classes I was taking or maybe it was due to everything currently being on Zoom. Regardless, Friday nights meant I could save all the homework I had for the weekend. During my 3:00 to 6:00 pm shift at the AAC, I could relax and focus on whatever tasks I needed to complete for that day.

Once they were finished, the space at the Asian American Center became kind of a safe spot for people to hang out in, and thus I began inviting my friends to come out to the building and hang out. Slowly but surely, it became a weekly thing. Friday nights at the AAC became a mix of movie nights, hangout times, and mealtimes. I remember being able to utilize the kitchen to prepare ramen and the one time my friend brought me and the other interns snacks from Malaysia.

I recall checking the scheduling for certain rooms at the AAC, and when there was a free room, learning how to connect to the TV in that room so we could enjoy playing our favorite songs and videos on a bigger screen. My evening shifts were also where I started using the term “Jopping” as a way to describe the action of listening and watching your favorite artists and songs with your friends. Jopping is a song made by SuperM, which mixes the word “jumping” and “popping.” The term was so ridiculous that it became sort of an inside joke to me and my other stan friends. So, we coined that term for ourselves and made it kind of a larger inside joke.

Now, when we say “do you want to jop,” we don’t mean the literal definition of “jumping” and “popping,” we mean do you want to watch a bunch of our favorite kpop/cpop/anykindofmusicianwant’svideo together and freak out about it simultaneously. During quarantine, one of the ways I reconnected with my friends and upperclassmen was “jopping” via Zoom and Metastream. The music videos would play on our screens at the same time, so we could make a queue and react to everything in that queue together.

For my first event at the Asian American Center, I’m hosting a virtual Jopping Night, where hopefully new joppers can experience the fun of being fans of the same artists and enthusiastic for our favorite songs together. Come by if you want to meet upperclassmen!