By: Ryan Gehm
The Technical Entertainment Crew’s Team Building Night has definitely been my favorite night of my freshman year. Compared to nights out with my friends, working football games, or going to band performances, Team Building Night surpassed these by far. The night included an amazing dinner, a raffle (which I won), skits put on by all the TEC members, countless games, and several hours of free time to spend with friends.
At first, I was uncertain whether I wanted to go to the event or not. I was afraid that I wouldn't have anyone to hang out with all night since I was a freshman and completely new to everyone. However, one of my old elementary school friends, who is now a junior, convinced me to go.
When I got to Team Building Night, I joined my friend, and everyone ate dinner. Afterwards, we got placed into different groups. I was assigned to a group of people I didn't know. We were designated a leader who took us into the lobby to start our first challenge: step on numerous numbered plastic pads, all in order from one to thirty five. The most difficult restriction was that the team could only have one person in the area of tiles at a time, and we couldn't step on the numbers out of order. We also had to complete the task in less than a minute. Our team first thought it would be an easy challenge, and jumped straight into the activity. Our final time on finishing the challenge was 2:51, along with many penalties for having too many people in the ring at one time. Although we didn't do very well with this method, we thought we could improve, so our instructor let us have another try. This time, our team planned out our strategy beforehand. Our second time doing it felt like clockwork: it was smooth, fun, and we got an amazing time of 1:07.
From the dot exercise, our instructor helped us realize that good work requires communication and planning. For our next three exercises, we excelled under the time limit and had a lot fun doing the activity as well.
After the challenge part of the night, our team leader let us go. We got to go play video games, hang out in the gym, and if we really wanted to, sleep. I was a little freshman, and I didn't know what to do, so I went into the gym and started shooting the basketball by myself. While I was in there, somebody that I didn't know came over and asked me if I wanted to come play ultimate Frisbee with him and a few other people. Even though I expected to be alone most of the night, I said yes, and I followed him to the other side of the gym.
Together, 7 other kids and I played, laughing and becoming friends. My new friends and I finished the night off by playing a new game that I learned, called “Apples to Apples”. When the night came to an end, I couldn't have been happier with my decision to come to Team Building Night.