Alumni Spotlight: David Yang

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David Yang on the University of Virginia’s Lawn.

David Yang graduated from Miller School of Albemarle in 2018. After spending one year in California at UC Davis studying and racing for the school’s cycling team, he transferred to the University of Virginia. He excelled as a student and leader on Grounds. His work with the Student Council led to the creation of numerous programs that benefited international students. He graduated from UVA in the spring of 2022 and began working at the University's Advancement Office. 

We sat down with David on the Lawn to learn more about his journey at MSA and at UVA.

Tell us about your time at Miller School as a student-athlete.

During my time at Miller School, I found love with these few things in life: cycling, nature, community, and UVA. These four loves guided my life in the years at and after Miller. Cycling is an obvious one. The main reason for me to transfer to Miller School from Blue Ridge School was the cycling team. As tough as some of the training days were, and as brutal as getting dropped on the mountain stage at Green Mountain Stage Race can be, I loved cycling so much. This love eventually led me to UC Davis, which has one of the best club cycling teams on the west coast as well as a unique bike culture on campus. At Davis, I trained and raced with teammates across California. We went on to win the WCCC Conference Champion in 2019. My time at Davis was joyful yet short-lived. The love for UVA was always in the corner of my vision. On an early spring weekend afternoon after a long ride, I picked up the courage to apply to UVA as a transfer student, hoping for a slim chance of going back to Charlottesville. 

Why UVA and Charlottesville?

The love for UVA that I got was a strange one. During the three years at Miller, I had only been to UVA for less than ten times. Most of the stops on Grounds were for history paper research trips. On these research trips, we would wander in Alderman Library pretending to be college students. We would then head over to the Corner for lunch just like many UVA students. Through these trips, I developed my sense of feeling for college and imagined my life as an undergraduate student. But with a hard rejection on my first application to UVA, I pivoted and went across the country to California. Maybe it was my self-proclaimed “heart touching” essay, or maybe they saw my loyalty for UVA, or maybe they just had a smaller than usual number of international students–I was accepted as a transfer student. Of course, for me, I replied “YES” within minutes of reading that acceptance letter. 

 

Tell us about your return to Charlottesville.

I came back to UVA and started to reconnect with friends and teachers from Miller School while making new friends on Grounds. From volunteering at the NICA mountain bike races (which I raced for my entire high school career) to riding with new friends on old country roads, the old days started to merge with the new life and form new memories. It was like a dream coming true. I found a sense of belonging here on Grounds. But soon, the pandemic hit during the spring 2020 semester when we were on spring break. Like many schools in the country and Miller School, students did not return to Grounds for months. The friends I just made were distanced, and the community I cherished were dissolved. 

This was hard for students around the world. Tell us more about your experiences and how you made a positive impact at UVA during this challenging moment in history.

It was as if the crystal ball of my UVA dream was shattered right in front of me. For months, I was frustrated and mad at myself that I didn’t return home when international travel was still possible. But the months staying in Charlottesville alone helped me to find a new love for the community on Grounds. When I saw that the UVA Student Council was looking to recruit a new director for the newly established International Student Affairs Committee, I took on the position initially to just keep myself occupied. But things quickly changed when emails from international students started to roll into my inbox. It was then when I realized that there were many more international students “stranded” in Charlottesville without friends and family. A sense of duty quickly mounted: I must help to rebuild this international community in adversity. That winter, I worked with staff from the International Center and volunteers to organize a series of international student events to enrich the already isolating experience of spending the holidays in a foreign country. We hosted trips to Monticello, Zoom gingerbread house build party, Christmas movie trips, an international community lunch, and a O’Hill Trail hike. Participants came from more than a dozen countries and across multiple schools and programs. In fact, the ideas of hosting these events were inspired by the weekend trips at Miller School. 

When the University returned to in-person, you did some more remarkable work in your leadership position. Tell us more about it. 

In spring 2021, the University decided to resume in-person instruction and bring students back on Grounds. Although it was a much-welcomed decision, it inherently imposed many challenges for international students. From international travel to housing, from vaccination to quarantine, these challenges quickly became widespread concerns among international students and parents. I started to get messages and email from friends and classmates expressing their concerns. Eventually, my International Student Affairs Agency team and I decided to take on the challenge to solve these issues that the University had not addressed. To do our job, we must hear from more students and parents. To achieve that, we hosted a Zoom virtual townhall meeting with more than 80 Chinese students and parents. In this townhall meeting, we listened to the complaints from our community members and then compiled them into a report which was later delivered to university administrators like the Vice Provost for Global Affairs and the Director of the International Studies Office. From there, we worked closely with the University to set up alternative housing and quarantine accommodations for international students traveling from great distance. We also collaborated with the International Center to prepare care-packages for students in post-arrival quarantine. And my team and I organized airport shuttle services that helped to resolve the “last 100 miles” problem between Dulles Airport and Charlottesville. 

You continued as a leader at UVA into your fourth year, and this had an impact on your current job. Can you tell us more about this?

During my last year at UVA, I kept leading this Student Council team to serve and represent international students. On the academic side, I started to contemplate life after UVA. Since my father was a lawyer, law school was something natural for me to think of. I went through the entire law school application cycle from preparing and taking the LSAT to writing the application essays to eventually even paying a law school deposit. But when May 2022 came and graduation was right around the corner, I started to have doubts. “Is law school really what I want to do?” “Am I ready to leave UVA?” And the answer to these questions was “no.” I wanted to continue my service to UVA and this community. I wanted to stay in Charlottesville. Twenty days away from graduation, while my friends were packing for a new city and a new life, I drafted the job application for the University Advancement Ambassador. After a few rounds of interview and with less than 48 hours away from the official end of my college career, I got that call offering me the job. 

As school started this fall, I did not return to the classroom. In another capacity, I remained a member of this community.