Extravaganza of Academics

Kennesaw State’s Academic Extravaganza is an opportunity to “celebrate the academic work of our newest students [and] honor the faculty who teach them.” It’s essentially a “science fair” minus the “science-y” part. It’s a showcase designed to give freshmen, who may not find it easy to share their work, a platform to express their thoughts, opinions, or research.

This was my first time participating in anything like this but I love the idea of being able to share something that’s important to me with my fellow peers and adults at Kennesaw.

I never liked the idea of these “showcases” because typically I would have to be forced to research or talk about a topic that I am not passionate about which in turn would result in a rushed, mediocre presentation that I wasn’t even proud of. But this was different, I was able to work with a group and come up with a topic that I enjoyed learning about and even more so, I loved being able to teach it to others. Seeing the look on people’s faces when we told them about alarming statistics and facts was priceless but it also made me feel like I was doing justice by bringing to issue to ears of those who were unaware of it. It felt as if the power was in my hands to ensure that anyone who came to our table, left knowing more than what they knew in the beginning.

Not A Cakewalk

Although I thoroughly enjoyed being apart of the event, it was not easy to prepare for. Being that it was my first, I wanted it to be perfect ( I know it’s impossible) but things didn’t go as planned. One of my partners got sick and she was originally the group leader. From the beginning, she was keeping everyone on task and making sure what needed to be done, got done.

This made me a tad bit lazy and I relied on her more than I did on myself; so when she got sick and couldn’t do what she was doing before, it made our group unstable and unorganized. It took us a while to bounce back and by the time we did, the extravaganza was in four days and our poster wasn’t even done. This resulted in preventable stress that hindered our ability to produce our best work. Even though we got everything done in time, I wish we could’ve prepared more and come up with more engaging ways to present our research to our audience.

In essence, this experience brought on new challenges that I can now learn from and apply to any other group activities that I do in my years here at KSU. Oh, and participate in more showcases!