05/22/2021
Alumni Spotlight: Alyssa Suba
Hello Barkada! My name is Justin Angeles and today I have Alyssa Suba, Bayan-E’s (2017-2018) Historian, and Luck-E (2018-2019) President. Her creative talents and her hard working attitude made her a phenomenal leader for Barkada. I hope you can give this article a read.
Alyssa majored in Psychology and graduated in 2020. She is currently tutoring children while looking for a job. In addition, she is learning how to improve her design and drawing skills. She explores different cultures through short films, animation, food, and music. She even loves to cook and bake. Fun fact, she was born on January 23 (01/23) and is left handed, which she has been told are signs of good luck.
Growing up, Alyssa was surrounded by many Filipinos. When she was in high school, the three main things she did were art, running, and her school’s Filipino club. She wanted to continue doing at least two of these things in college. Growing up, Alyssa wanted to study art, but ended up signing up for Architecture, which meant that she would have to leave the Bay. The summer before school started, her mom suggested she join Barkada after hearing about it from a friend. She even gave Alyssa money to pay the membership fee. When freshman orientation came around, she met April Castro, who helped her sign up for classes since she had to leave early for a flight. She signed up for Barkada but did not go to the Asian Pacific Islander Student Center (APISC), one of Barkada’s main hang out spots, for a while. She attended the Tagalog workshops but was still a bit shy around Barkada. However, it changed during Kuya Ate Ading Reveal Night when she got picked up by Marlon Abubo.
Her favorite moment with her Barkada family was when she went to Ski Trip with her Kuya Marlon. When they were visiting the lake, there was a small wooden plank that was being used as a bridge. Alyssa thought she could just walk around it but started sinking in the mud and her kuya had to pull her out. Her boot ended up getting stuck. They also found a long strip of ice on the road and tried ice skating on it, but then her kuya slipped and fell on his back. When she picked up her first ading, Isaiah Baltazar, they hung out a lot and even had ice cream day every Tuesday since they didn’t have class. With her ading Diego Cordova, she joined intramurals for the first time to play soccer with him. With her ading Audrea Dayapera, they went on ice cream dates whenever they ran into each other on campus. All the small moments with her adings is something Alyssa cherishes forever. She called her line Sunshine Line because they would get ice cream all the time, and typically someone would get ice cream when it’s sunny outside.
Alyssa ended up running for Historian Bayan-E year because people told her that she should run for a position that includes something she already does. Taking pictures and video editing was always something she loved to do. Before she was a psychology major, she was an architecture major. She really wanted to go into design instead of architecture, but wasn’t allowed to. She thought it would be a good opportunity to practice with the Adobe Apps and express her creativity through Barkada. The next year she ran for President. When she was Historian, she ended up recruiting a ton of people for the Historian Committee. It helped her understand how to manage and delegate tasks. After talking to Warjay Naigan, Legac-E’s (2015-2016) President, at the legendary BOFA house, she learned about both positions, even though she only wanted to run for Historian at the time. She decided she would give it a try and push herself out of her comfort zone. She took a leap of faith and she ended up winning the position.
Her favorite moments with Bayan-E board were documented in the vlogs. She remembers when they did the Lumpia Chubby Bunny challenge, filming the videos brought joy to her. Some of her other favorite moments were the BGT 90s theme music video, What’s in the Box vlog, Anong Balita Committee picnic, and even the KAA video featuring Barkada member Adi Nur, cause his name sounds like ading. She doesn’t remember much because she was usually asleep.
Her favorite Luck-E moments were when they did internal collaborations, such as the one with Hermanos and Hermanas. Since they had to deal with semester conversion, she thought it would be a good opportunity to experiment with many things that year. She also tried to do something with board positions she has not done before to learn a bit about everything. Retreat that year was fun as it was different from her first experience. The random impromptu socials hold many great memories for her. There was even a week where there was a social every day. Even though it was tiring, the excitement she felt that year was contagious.
For Anong Balita, Alyssa used the quote, “Control what you can, confront what you can’t, and always remember how lucky you are to have yourself,” which is from a song by the band The Maine. She hears the first part from others all the time, but the last part is what makes this specific version stick with her the most. She says this quote doesn’t always apply to everything, but it’s important to remember that you’re the only one who understands your own experiences. At the end of the day, it’s just you doing your thing.
Alyssa did not stop at Barkada’s executive board. She became External Vice President for the Pilipino American Studies Kollective (PASK) and even became the Vice Chairperson for the Southern California Pilipinx-American Student Alliance (SCPASA). She wanted to explore SoCal before moving back home. She loves hearing other people’s stories and she felt like she could expand her worldview as external. One of her favorite moments that year with PASK was the kamayan at UA Barkada house and the Kamayan at La Mesa. With SCPASA, she still can’t believe she helped pull off SCPASA Summit at CPP that year. She had so much fun at Friendship Games, where she was able to meet almost all the externals and hand out stickers she designed just for that day.
Alyssa was part of several Barkada houses. She was part of Hyphy House. She remembers the housewarming party that was planned. The nights where people would all just sit around being together were fun. There was even a point where all the roommates were on board (Luck-E year). The random moments and food outings were something she will always look back on. During her last year, she became a part of CrAcKhEaD hAuS for roughly 2 months. Every night was a fun night for her with her roommates, even when they just watched the same music videos every night. She had so many memories with Infinit-E’s (2020-2021) External Affairs, Ma Vien Dizon, where they would randomly go study, hang out, or meet up with other externals.
Barkada was quite different back then. For her first two years, CPP used the quarter system and converted to the semester system at the beginning of her third year. There was rapid growth in communication via social media between different platforms and features that were more useful to organizations. For her personally, Alyssa was finding herself amongst all these changes. She switched her major from Architecture to Psychology in hopes of learning about perception and creativity. Alyssa was doing things that she felt she wanted to do instead of things that she was told to do which made her happier. She felt like she could take a step back and experience the world around her for once.
Alyssa recommends that everyone in Barkada should go to Historian Committee workshops. She wants to place an importance on not only preserving things but the work that goes into it as well. Being able to see the process is important—just because something is easy to look at doesn’t mean it was easy to make. For Alyssa, she felt that if Barkada helped her learn a lot about her own culture, then the other cultural clubs on campus would help her learn a lot about their respective cultures. She believes that everyone should externalize and internalize at least once to learn from other organizations.
Alyssa’s favorite place to get food is at Korean restaurants such as Love Letter, Mister Bossam, or Red Castle. The sweet potato pizza from Love Letter Pizza & Chicken lives in her mind rent free. There were many places to get Korean food in SoCal compared to the Bay Area, and Barkada introduced her to a lot of it.
As much fun as Alyssa had in Barkada, she learned many things like learning how to “let it marinate,” which is a term Alyssa randomly started using during board meetings. She exclaims that it’s one step to let things soak in, but it’s another step to really internalize your experiences and use them to better yourself as a person. She thinks about her many memories and looks at them as lessons through self reflection.
In the future, Alyssa would like to see a Barkada LinkedIn group to connect people with jobs and opportunities, especially outside of Southern California. More people are starting to use LinkedIn nowadays which would be a fantastic opportunity for Barkada for networking. During her years on board, they always talked about wanting to help older members with career planning and after-college things, but had a hard time carrying it out. Alyssa hopes to see Anong Balita continue. She exclaims that a video can’t capture everything, and that sometimes words can capture memories in a unique way. Anong Balita has the ability to give opportunities for Barkada members to tell stories.
Alyssa has made so many achievements in Barkada. In addition to being Bayan-E’s Historian, Luck-E President, PASK’s External Vice President, and SCPASA’s Vice Chairperson, she helped preserve Barkada history by downloading all the data from the Barkada WikiSpace before the site closed down and transferred it to the Barkada website. This included the names of board members from the 1980s and 1990s as well as the entire list of lifetime members. With the advice from her predecessors Aaron Lucela and Alyssa Castro, she made Historian Committee workshops at the beginning of the school year an annual event. She even designed the Luck-E year shirts. Furthermore, she is a big reason why meetings are bi-weekly in the evening instead of every week at University Hour. She didn’t want members to even think about debating between attending academic club meetings and Barkada meetings. Having longer time slots and creating more substantial meetings would make the experience better for the members that did attend these longer bi-weekly meetings.
Alyssa misses Barkada dearly. She misses being able to hit people up and go out randomly. It’s difficult to do that now, especially in a pandemic (but mostly because she lives so far away). She misses the energy and seeing everyone so excited for whatever is going on. She misses helping other people learn about themselves. It was hard to feel terrible being surrounded by the people she loved.
If Alyssa could say one thing for the members right now, she said, “Try something you don’t think you will ever do at least once. Try to look at things outside of how you normally would. You don’t know what you don’t know. Seek things out and be adventurous.”
Alyssa would like to give a shoutout to everyone in her line: her kuyas, adings, cos, grands, and great grands. Shoutout to the JBEEs, Triple A Cos, Benny’s, Hyphy House, BTBWAR, Retirement Line, CrAcKhEaD hAuS, her fellow Royalt-E babies and Royalt-E Board, Bayan-E Board, Bayan-E babies, Luck-E Board, Luck-E babies, Schlaz-E Board, Tiwala Board, and everyone who helped her along the way in college.
Thank you for everything Alyssa. I will always remember the time we went to Los Angeles in the middle of the night to have a random photoshoot. I think about the fun times we had whenever I visited Hyphy House and I look back on Luck-E Board memories still. You were an amazing leader. I was honored to serve with you. I miss you lots, best wishes and much love.
