Within the first few seconds of entering the SSB 201 room, I was stunned by the volume of the rambious laughter shared by a group of girls my age. I was one of the first ones to drop by that afternoon but as I witnessed people filed one by one, the noise only doubled in size. As a freshman, I did not have a clear outline of what to expect since it was my first group meeting with FSU’s Hallyu Wave. However, with a brief overview of the club’s mission statement on the campus’ directory of school organizations, Hallyu Wave’s central purpose is to explore multiple aspects of Korean pop culture together with FSU students. Specifically, students who are interested in learning about a different culture that they are not a part of or want to inquire more information about. As I looked around and observed my fellow peers, it was true that most of the club members involved were not Korean, but in fact, consisted of diverse people across multiple races. By then, it was clear that the objective of FSU’s Hallyu Wave was to also get together as many people as they can, in spite of their potential differences in background or majors that would otherwise prevent them to make friends with those mutually interested in K-pop or anything else related to Korean pop culture.
Delving deeper into the club’s origins and background, the club was founded three years ago and ever since, has held group meetings that are publicized through their own Facebook group and other social platforms such as Instagram and Twitter. This seems to be an important functional text for the club itself, since a majority of crucial information used to notify club members are circulated through these sites, such as date and time of place that the meetings will be held at. Another text that performs a function inside the Hallyu Wave community are the meetings since they require the club members to become engaged followed by fun group activities that simultaneously allow them to acquire a deeper understanding of certain customs of Korean culture. For example, the latest meeting about Korean beauty and its standards as we learned about intricate skincare routines, incited conversations about how drastically different Korean beauty is from standards found here in America. Internally, this is how communication is carried out in the club as members discuss over certain topics of interest face to face. Communication and level of engagement for the members of Hallyu Wave are also founded within online platforms as aforementioned. For example, surveys are generated in order to take into account the opinions of multiple club members such as song suggestions that the members want to learn next in Hallyu Wave’s occasional dance workshop. In a way, the surveys can function as a text since they also help run the club as an alternative form of communication outside of Hallyu Wave and act as a guide for next group activities that requires in-person interaction.
Because Hallyu Wave heavily considers itself to be an organization that shares a tight-knit community-like support within its club, their Big and Little program also serves as a working text since the program has a protocol that functions to bridge upperclassmen and lowerclassmen together. For more context, the Big and Little program serves as mentorship as a “Big” takes care of his or her “Little” by sharing resources relevant to the club. The program is also fundamental for networking as it creates long-lasting and meaningful relationships beyond the club itself. The program’s protocol is to first sign up and apply for a spot for a “Big” or “Little” position. People will then be paired up randomly or by other common interests. At the latest meeting, the partners for the Big and Little program were revealed by a random matching of paper, where one person would have the name of the band while the other person had the song title and would then have to go around the room in order to find each other. The program’s protocol could be seen as a working text since it's another text that centers itself around building face-to face interactions within the community that otherwise is not static nor tangible. These mentioned texts so far are generally how the club communicates its central messages and objectives while also building valuable connections inside the group with its members. Overall, FSU’s Hallyu Wave is a club that promotes diversity and open-mindness of different cultures, helping to create a positive impact here on campus.