Today we’d like to introduce you to Andy Zhu.
Hi Andy, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
The story that I wish to share is about the dance club that I founded a few years ago. The whole experience meant a lot to me, and I was able to learn so much from it, including realizing what I want to pursue in college and beyond. Here’s my story!
I founded K-Krew (a K-pop dance cover team) as a freshman in 2019 at Jasper High School and have served as president to this day as a senior at Plano West. Essentially, we focus on creating K-pop dance covers and performing them at a variety of organizations, events, and venues.
For the 2019-20 school year, we struggled to find people and organize dance projects due to a few reasons such as COVID, poor organization, and my inexperience with leading. I was so passionate about making the club succeed but that year didn’t work out for us as most of our members were still new to the idea of a K-pop dance club and I had little to no experience with organizing, leading, and successfully managing so many people. I was a transfer student to Jasper and had few connections with others which made it difficult for me to transition to high school, let alone run a club. Competing against us was an already well-established and popular hip-hop dance club called “The Effect” which made our battle against them difficult to win. K-Krew was constantly compared to “The Effect” and I was sometimes embarrassed to be called the leader of K-Krew since we were nothing compared to the popularity and productivity that “The Effect” had. They were pushing out dance projects left and right and performing at pep rallies and local events while we couldn’t even complete an entire project that school year. I was on the verge of discontinuing K-Krew after COVID hit in my sophomore year because at that point it wasn’t getting any better since my club couldn’t meet in person which meant we couldn’t dance. Then all of a sudden, I realized what I was doing wrong and decided to switch things up by changing our policies and marketing strategies. Long story short, we found success after I began becoming more proactive by asking people about my club and more forward-looking in our search for members during the middle of my sophomore year. We were able to produce more covers and were spreading fast throughout our local community. Members joined at a rapid pace, and I also recruited multiple new officers to join in as well which helped us spread further and make a bigger impact in our community. During my junior year, I was revitalized and ready to make K-Krew the best club there was at West and through our multiple projects and covers, we were able to achieve unprecedented success! As of this writing, we have over 450,000 views on YouTube and Instagram, 1,500 subscribers, and 3 million YouTube Impressions! This rags-to-riches story may be cliche but its effect on me is immeasurable. I’ve learned a great deal about leading, organizing, and more through almost 4 years of serving as president and I’d love for my club to be featured on your network so that our story may be shared with more people. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be featured!
You can check out our YouTube and Instagram pages through these links:
YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6X19dM2qPx9-CcFSWr2zig
IG: https://www.instagram.com/k_krew_pwsh/
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As mentioned previously, the biggest struggles were the fact that I started the club as a freshman with little to no experience running a club. My incompetence as a leader was then evident through our failure to organize any successful projects during my freshman year. COVID then was another obstacle for us since it hindered our ability to meet in person and dance. However, these mistakes also made me realize what I was doing wrong and so, therefore, I was able to understand the reasons for our struggle by the middle of sophomore year. It took quite a while, but the club was soon turning around, and we were finally getting projects completed and more people started to hear about us. Today we have 6 officers and over 30 audition-admitted Dance Cover Team members. We’ve also reached hundreds of thousands of people in multiple countries like Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines, Brazil, and the United Kingdom through our videos!
We’ve been impressed with PWSH K-Krew, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I founded it as a freshman back at Jasper in 2019. We then changed the name to K-Krew in 2021 to fit the Plano West title. I’ve served as president ever since then and my responsibilities include scheduling rehearsals, reaching out to hosts/school staff, organizing events/dance covers, public speaking, and presentations, managing socials/executive team, marketing our club’s initiatives and content, building our club’s public persona, and so much more. What sets K-Krew apart from many other dance clubs is that we have excellent leadership, initiation, and pride in what we do. We are constantly looking out for new opportunities. K-Krew is always working on a project whether it is something we’ve done before or not, hence the reason why I’ve reached out to so many local news networks so that hopefully we can get the chance to spread the word about our club on a news platform. We aren’t afraid of trying new things and just being ourselves. Traditionally, K-pop wasn’t a very popular topic in our local community but with the establishment of K-Krew, we were able to turn that around and spread the K-Krew name to where we are one of, if not the most, popular student-run club at Plano West.
I thrive in challenging situations and find joy in leading others and getting them where they need to be. I’ve learned so much about leadership, organization, and teamwork. These experiences and skills I’ve learned will never go away, instead, they’ll stay with me especially when I begin college soon. Something that I’m most proud of about myself is my decision to create the club back in 2019. I understood the challenge of running a club as a freshman and I wasn’t afraid to face it. I’m so grateful that I didn’t back away from starting the club because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here today as president and leading such an impactful organization.
I want readers to know about our story. How we started small and were nowhere near as successful as some of the dance clubs nearby that were already established and had massive fanbases and support. I want the readers to know that if you have an idea, you’re passionate about, don’t hesitate to make it into a reality. If you’re willing to put in the effort to see success and not back down when hardships arise, then your patience and determination will pay off. I also want to direct a message to the many K-pop enthusiasts and dancers out there: If you want to start a K-pop/dance club or even join one, don’t hesitate to do so. Go pursue your passion and do what you love because you never know what may happen. I started off as a mediocre dancer and after 3 years, I’ve seen a major improvement in my dance technique that wouldn’t be possible if I told myself years ago that I would never get better. Don’t doubt yourself – I know it sounds cliche, but I’m only saying this because I come from experience.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is subjective, as I’m sure all of us can agree. Not everyone sees success in the same way. It varies between people because of certain circumstances like family backgrounds, financial situations, etc. Success to me is when you’ve learned something from a process regardless of the outcome. The result could be what you initially wanted or not, but if you’ve spent time and effort on the road to achieving a goal and you’ve learned something from it, then that’s a success.
The best example I can give is when I auditioned for Drum Major for the Plano West Wolf Band 2022-23. I just came out of a traumatic car accident with a fractured skull near April of 2022 and was still struggling to walk without being dizzy, however, I still went to the Drum Major audition clinic the moment I could walk because I wanted to show my director that I was determined to get the position and nothing could hold me back, not even a devastating accident. I tried my best, through what I could do, to prepare for the audition. I contacted former Drum Majors for advice, took lessons from them, and practiced with friends for hours on the weekends. On the day of the audition, I was ready. My audition went well, and I was excited about the results because I knew I had a good chance of being selected given my qualifications for the position.
A few days later, I was informed that my name was not on the list of the chosen Drum Majors for the 2022-23 marching season. I was absolutely devastated. I fell into a depression and struggled to snap back into reality and enjoy the last few weeks of school. I hated myself for the possible mistakes I could’ve made throughout the school year and audition process and as well as for the accident which possibly contributed to the outcome. I was at the lowest point in my life at that time and looking back, success was probably the last term that I would associate myself with at that moment.
It was hard to realize then, but I understand now that the entire audition process was far from an absolute failure. The experience of auditioning for a position I truly desired revealed the dedication and resilience in me that I never thought I had, especially coming out of an accident. I learned how to improve the utilization of the resources that I had around me, such as reaching out to friends and former Drum Majors that helped me in the process. My failure shook me, and it helped me cope with rejection and learn that life is not fair sometimes. Failure happens all the time. But shaping that failure into a learning experience is why I also consider it a success. If I were to become a Drum Major, I would most likely not have learned how to accept and reflect on failure. I wouldn’t have learned how important the process is and how success isn’t determined by the outcome. In a way, I’m grateful that I wasn’t chosen for the position because I was able to learn so much from it. And these learning experiences wouldn’t have been possible if I was chosen. All in all, success is all about the process and what you learn from it. If you achieved your goal, then that’s awesome, congratulations! If you didn’t, reflect on the process and learn from it. The worst thing anyone can do is not learn anything from a process. It all depends on how you shape your defeat. Do you just get upset and curse at the world around you, or do you look back and learn from it?
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/k_krew_pwsh/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6X19dM2qPx9-CcFSWr2zig
