I think when I look back at my years at Holy Cross I will immediately remember every Spring Weekend. My freshman year I was shadowing, learning the ropes so that I could run it, which I did with Alexie my sophomore year. Now this year I was one step removed, but still got to help with every event and be a cheerleader for Alexandra and Mary who put together an amazing weekend!
Thursday started the weekend off with a bang at the Spring Weekend Kick-Off in Kimball. I spent most of the afternoon blowing up balloons and driving t-shirts and supplies from Hogan to the event. This was interrupted in a great way by my Luxembourg meeting where we received our plane tickets and overseas cell phones – less then 2 weeks, I can’t believe it! I finally made my way down to Hogan and had a great time watching Limbo contests, musical chairs and the most intense arm wrestling match I have ever seen…it was a great night!
Friday was another beautiful day. It has been nice to have a couple of classes outside with the nice weather and it is great to give tours in something other then rain! My fellow tour guides and I have charted it and it rained or snowed literally every Friday we had to give a tour. Our rainboots certainly got a workout! Friday night was the comedian Christian Finnegan and I just happened to be stationed outside his lounge area so I got to schmooze with the comedians and watch the show from the balcony in a comfy chair.
The chair was pivotal because the next day we had the Spring Weekend Carnival, Fireworks and GrooveBoston dance party. Jimmy and I tried to figure it out and we think we both worked for 14 or so hours, 1:00PM to 3:00AM and we probably stood up for about 13 of those hours…it’s all part of the joy of CAB I guess! The carnival was amazing, very well organized and it is always fun to go on the rides you loved as a kid including the “Tubs of Fun”, bounce house and Mega slide, not to mention eating ridiculous amounts of fried dough. The Fireworks were a blast (literally and figuratively) and the GrooveBoston dance party, a new event this year, was a hit with approximately 500 people coming throughout the night.
This past Tuesday was the last big event for Spring Weekend, the Spring Weekend Concert featuring Jason Mraz and Everclear. I’ll try to give an insider’s perspective on things because it takes A LOT of work to pull off a concert. The day started at 6:30 AM when most people arrived at the Hart center to load in all the equipment for building the stage, hanging the lights and working the sound. The rule for concert day is that anytime you are not in class, you are at the Hart center working so before, after and in between my Education class and Shakespeare class, I was doing some heavy lifting at the Hart center. As you can see from the pictures, it is amazing to walk in at 7:00AM and see a green tarp on the floor and then to leave around noon and see an entire stage built, it certainly gives you a sense of achievement! At 6:00 there was the security meeting where we got our stations for the night. I was in the ticket booth which was a lot of fun because whenever a good song came on we could take shifts and run out to the concert and stand next to the barricade front row to watch it. We did get a little stir crazy though, as you can see from the attached pictures. The entire show was amazing, especially Jason Mraz who obviously enjoyed himself because he did THREE encores, much to the chagrin of us workers because it meant we could not start taking down the stage until midnight. The process of breaking down the stage and rolling everything into trucks took about three hours and at 3:00AM a group of about 30 faithful volunteers trudged back to their dorms. It was a long, but very fun, night.
So there is my Spring Weekend update, hopefully it gave a bit of insight into what CAB goes through to plan and execute most of the events you see on campus. It’s a lot of work but I enjoy every minute. Study period started Wednesday so I get to catch up on a bit of sleep before the onslaught of due dates then it is off to Luxembourg!
