Clubs on campus are working harder than ever this semester. With so many events, and so many hours worth of programming, the real question is: “What does it take to truly be involved?” I propose an experiment: I, a lone, procrastination-enthusiastic college student, would attempt to 1 v 1 Loyola events
“Why do this to yourself?”, you may ask. Although the answer is as much a mystery to myself as to anyone else, I hypothesize that Loyola events provided just the right amount of interesting, overlapping meetings to mentally promote a challenge. Kind of like watching any trained athlete on TV, and immediately afterwards thinking, “Easy. I could do that.” After extensive re-con on all the available Bridge events, I set out.
While on a WordPress instructional Zoom in the library, I tried to make out semblances of ghost stories from across the first-floor at the “Read and Roam” ghost stories event. The only thing I managed to makeout in my multitasking state was “and now we’ll leave this space for a while.” Of course. The Zoom session ended, and I walked over to a now apocalyptically empty IDEA space. Mission failure.
As I walk out of the library in defeat, I see a conspicuous group huddled by Thea Bowman. Could it be? I walk up as a woman steps in front of the crowd and says, “Thank you for joining us for the library’s Read and Roam event.”
After that particular dose of salt in the wound, I grabbed food and headed to the Lange Lounge celebration which had little fake pumpkins, coloring pages, and a cute dog named Maddox. For my very limited 15 minutes in the space, I got to be a fly on the wall of the RA friend group. I consider the event a success solely because I got permission to tell my friends that their RA said they were disruptive.
I headed over to the “Decorate a Sugar Cookie” event, which was packed. I met friends there and, after decorating a cookie so unappetizing that my roommate couldn’t even pretend to accept it out of politeness, we walked over to the Hogwarts Hounds debut meeting.
Although we’d missed the house-sorting quiz, we stayed for the entire Kahoot. With jealousy, I watched as Harry, Hermione, and Ron squishmallows were passed out to the winners, and settled for my complimentary sorting-hat chocolate which decreed (wrongly) that I am a Gryffindor.
Splitting from my friends, I headed the Her Campus’s “Vision Board-Making” event to peacefully sit by myself and glue colorful pieces of paper to another piece of paper. The oddly mesmerizing activity and relative break from social interaction made me lose track of time. The pay-off was being the only vision board that got an individual feature in the Her Campus.
All not-so-humble brags aside, I meandered hopelessly around Beatty’s first floor searching for the “Swiftie” event before finally catching the tail end of the meeting. In the few short moments I spent there, the amount of connection and friendliness I was greeted with was comforting and easy, especially with only a handful of those who stayed later into the night.
Hiking up to a Hammerman hallway event from mid-campus, on a time crunch, is no easy feat. Huffing and puffing, I greeted my RA friend, who showed me the beautiful cobwebbed hallway.
Finally, I met up with my roommate for the 2026 SGA Bingo. The winner of the elephant Jellycat proudly proclaimed that he would place it in his closet to collect dust, which caused an uproar in the bingo room. In a daring twist of events, one student ran off with the elephant Jellycat from its original ‘ungrateful’ recipient. “She’s just gone,” I remember the winner saying, perplexed. SGA huddled together. Someone suggested that they try and find her on her way back, and another said they knew where she lived and could knock on her door to ask for it. Eventually, my roommate and I decided to head out. About 100 feet away from the room, slowly pacing on the bridge, was the girl with the Jellycat. She asked why they hadn’t come out yet to ask for it back, and once she realized they hadn’t caught on, she turned around to give the imported stuffed animal back and put an end to the practical joke.
The return of the Jellycat marked the end of this hectic day. When presented with so many options for how to spend your day, it may be tempting to speedrun them all. Especially as the last few semesters of college creep closer, the pressure to take advantage of all that Loyola offers before it is no longer available can become overwhelming. And, although I would argue that I have proved speedrunning Loyola events is an (almost) possible feat, I think this has also proved that you don’t need to speedrun events to get the most of your Loyola experience. At the end of the day, there is something to be said for sitting down at one event with a friend or two, and simply enjoying the time spent there, speed-run or not.
