Every Wednesday at 5 p.m. senior education major Roseanna Ling makes her way towards to the Mills International Center to discuss the weekly agenda. Ling arrives and sees familiar faces and commences the meeting. Ling is a senior and co-director for the Asian Pacific American Student Union at the University of Oregon. Her involvement in APASU inspired and changed Ling into a charismatic leader and she’s proud of her time in APASU.

“Roseanna is very bubbly and I think she’s made a very good leader this year,” senior Daniel Chang said.

Born and raised in Hawaii, Ling made the decision to leaving the island and come to the mainland. She wanted a school that offered Wushu and when she saw the UO offered it, she knew she had to take advantage of the opportunity.

“I chose to leave Hawaii because as an educator there’s a lot to learn and I wasn’t going to get it if I stayed at home,” Ling said. “All of my coaches encouraged me to go to the mainland. A lot of the advice they gave me was to leave the island because if I stayed on the island I wasn’t going to get where I wanted to be.”

For Ling, the college experience has shared its ups and downs but she’s grateful for her involvement in APASU. Ling remembers struggling her freshman year trying to adjust to the college life and the difficulty she had.

“I remember freshman year and the difficulty I had especially because I was from Hawaii. People would ask ‘where are you from?’ and I’d say ‘oh, I’m from Hawaii’ and then they would say ‘oh.’ Then they would ask someone else and they would say ‘oh, I’m from Beaverton’ and someone would answer ‘I’m from Beaverton too.’ No one from my graduating class came to the UO,” Ling said.

While freshman year was difficult for Ling she was invited from a friend to attend an APASU meeting. Although at first she was skeptical she’s glad she attended the meeting because she found a place where she could make a lot of friends and have a sense of culture while being away from home. Towards the end of her sophomore year she was encouraged to run for junior executive and got the position. Now she serves as co-director.

“Rosie is the kind of leader that works with sincerity and passion,” sophomore Wing Ng said. ”While I wouldn’t call her the typical leader she works just as well because she makes it so that people want to work with her.”

Aside from her busy schedule, Ling enjoys watching movies with her friends, bike riding and playing ‘League of Legends’ under the username xiaolingo. She has recently become obsessed with ‘The Lord of the Rings’ series and hopes to get started on the ‘X-Men’ series too.

After graduation Ling hopes to secure a UO Teach grant that would allow her to teach in a low-income area and help those in need.