My First Week As A Hawkeye!

Hey Hawkeyes! I’m really excited to have this opportunity to tell you all about my experiences throughout my first year at Iowa! There was a lot going on here in Iowa City the first week, but I’ll tell you about my favorites:  

Honors Primetime 

Primetime is a three-and-a-half-day workshop for honors students to introduce them to the honors program and faculty around campus. There were a bunch of primetime workshops that went on and something for everyone: from Creative Writing to How Birds Work. My primetime workshop was Democratic Play: How Game Design Can Address Wicked Problems, where we put a spin on or made completely new games to make it more bearable to talk about controversial or political topics in a civil manner. As someone who is interested in politics, policy, and government, I thought it was super interesting to be able to design a game to play that incorporated fun into political discussions! We ended Primetime with a symposium, and every group got to present what they learned or what they had done over the past three days.    

Bingo! 

As part of On Iowa! the university hosted a bingo night in the Iowa Memorial Union. Being from Wisconsin, I really was not expecting the absolute hype Iowans have for Bingo. The screams when someone won a bingo or even got a number they wanted reminded me of the cheers when my high school football team won the state championship. Yeah, that loud. I also learned that there is a specific thing to mark your bingo card (a nice dab of ink), and I won a lamp! I already had a lamp, but the more the merrier, right?  

Passport to Iowa 

Passport to Iowa was a showcase of clubs and groups around campus, including a Chinese rap group, the dance club, acapella groups, and the men’s gymnastics team. It was fascinating to see all the groups perform, and to see what Iowa has to offer. Before the showcase happened, there was also a mini student involvement fair, and through that I was able to join Dance Marathon and the Daily Iowan TV!  

Kickoff at Kinnick 

Finally, there is Kickoff at Kinnick. All freshmen either walked or rode a (very) crowded bus to Kinnick Stadium to be a part of the iconic Block I picture on the field. While there, we learned the Iowa Fight Song (Fight! Fight! Fight! For Iowa!) and did our first ever Hawkeye Wave to the kids in the Stead Family Children’s Hospital. Not gonna lie, it’s a tearjerker. Especially when the kids had lights to wave back to us out the window! The Wave is one of my favorite things about Iowa Football, and I’m so excited that I get to do it for the next four years. 

These were only a few of the things that went on during On Iowa!: there were SO many other things to do as well. I feel that with classes starting, most weeks aren’t going to be as exciting as this one, but my first week was one for the books, and it’s already starting to feel like home. 

 Talk soon, 

Chloe 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *