Entertaining Ideas
TarHeels&Rebels
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What kind of event would you want to go to?
I'm in grad school and I'm in charge of a welcome dinner/mixer for a certain group of new, incoming students.
So far, I have 7 students and $150 from the school. I'd like to have this event in the next 10 days. The student body association already does a back to school mixer at a bar for the entire school, so I don't want to do that. Here are my thoughts:
- Mexican restaurant
- BBQ restaurant
- catered Mexican or BBQ or ______ on school grounds
- cookout at a park
- catered something at my house
The point is really for this group of students to talk and get to know each other, so I want something conducive to that. What would you want to go to?
Re: What kind of event would you want to go to?
I assume these are also grad students? I'm inclined to say something at the school. Restaurants aren't always conducive to talking and socializing. I'd be concerned about weather in a park. Is there some interesting place on campus you can hold it?
Yes, they're grad students.
Our building is its own self-contained portion of campus and there's nothing other than a break room with plastic chairs. Blech. I mean, it's a brand new gagillion dollar building, but I can't think of any place in there to do a cool hang out. The dean of students had suggested tents set up in the courtyard outside the building. (WDYT of that?)
There's a hotel and conference center on campus I could look into, but ew, stuffy. I didn't go to undergrad here, so I'm not familiar with like cool art departments and such.
The Mexican restaurant I have in mind is huge and really good and you can easily get a table for 20 or whatever, but you're right, you can't mingle.
I, too, am worried about it being blazing hot in a park.
And so there's my house. I don't mind and I can easily host that number, esp if the school's paying for catering, ya know? But that might make some people feel awkward.
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Yum! That sounds fantastic!
Ok, Ginger, pizza vote acknowledged.
There's also a place that does fried and grilled chicken tenders with picnic sides. You can't eat there, but we could do that in the school courtyard under tents.
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Tents outside also makes me worry about weather. Will you be a mentor type person for these students? I just think your home may be awkward.
Ask the dean's secretary for an idea of where to hold it on campus.
TarHeels, I know you are of the Southern persuasion but is your school in the south? If so, I'd do BBQ with southern sides--give it some local personality. Cornbread or biscuits, potato salad, cheese grits, baked beans, coleslaw, greens--plenty for a vegetarian or someone who doesn't like BBQ to make a meal out of.
And I would actually vote for your home. We were always at other people's houses in grad school and it made it way less stuffy and school-like. They are going to be itching to get to know each other, the advanced students and the area--get off campus.
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I'm going to agree with your hubby and Ginger.
I think it might be easier to go to a public place than a stranger's house (or for you to have strangers in yours).
With 7 people, I don't think mingling should be difficult on a porch. Plus, pizza is the type of food that's served family style, so that will get people talking. Maybe you can do a simple ice breaker. Even if it's just name tags with an interesting fact about themselves. HTH.
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I was going to say pizza/brewery sounds perfect, especially since you have the potential to be introducing the grad students to their new after seminar hang out
I agree with all of this this.
The pizza place sounds fun, and if it's only 7 people, everyone should be able to interact in that setting. Plus, it's a lot less work for you than hosting at your place.
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I like the pizza place/brewery or catered Mexican food at your house. Both of those ideas sound great.
Also, for an icebreaker there is this game we played during undergrad orientation that's probably one of the best icebreaker games I've ever played, and I usually hate things like that. You have a bowl of candy and pass it around. Everyone is supposed to take some candy. It doesn't matter how much, but they can't eat it yet. After everyone has gotten some candy then you go around the room and everyone has to share one random fact about themselves for each piece of candy that they took. You don't have to play with candy either, just anything that people would take different amounts of. (I've heard of people playing with toilet paper and telling everyone to take how much toilet paper they typically use, and then sharing one fact per square of toilet paper.)
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