So last week we had our yearly ICE-BREAKER event. In truth the level of enjoyment and participation seems to be dissipating year after year. Speaking as someone who has attended, and usually participated, in this event every year I personally feel whoever is organising it is over-thinking the brief. While this year’s brief was in fact an interesting, thought provoking assignment, I feel most people saw it as something too complex and overall not a worthwhile endeavour. Sadly with the seniors lacking we lose our drive and co-ordination – resulting in subpar efforts, designs and turnout.

The bottom line is no-matter what schemes you dream up to get the students involved – be it threats of losing year marks or hopelessly false promises of grand first place prizes – the kiddies will simply NOT rock up unless they WANT  to. Consider the sandcastle building a few years back. Arguably the most successful ice breaker ever, it sported a HUGE turnout of hundreds of participants and an even larger audience throughout the course of the day. It was even in the paper and I heard it may have been on TV. This was a successful venture because while it required planning and research, it really only consumed one day of our time, cost NOTHING and wasn’t particularly skill intensive. Basically even if it flopped you still had a good time in the sun making a mess.

Consider that virtually the entire event flops if you can’t manage to get the senior students involved. The newbies (ideally who this event is aimed at) simply lack the technical and social skills to deliver a successful project. They lack the vital sense of reasoning that our cranium has had lobotomised during our years of... joyful study. In conclusion?? Come up with something that looks fun, is fun and costs next to nothing. Otherwise let us build sandcastles!