October 9, 2018

By Adele Du

MU’s Honors College hosted the fourth annual Geek Week from Oct. 1 to 6, in various locations across campus. The week consisted of a series of activities including trivia, craft, coffee art, games, football tailgating and more.

The event was co-organized by Kristina Bradley, one of the academic advisors of the college and Honors Ambassdors Programming Board. The board formed last spring, focusing on planning events associated with the college.

“Geek Week used to be an event that happened exclusively in residential halls years ago and we decided to bring it back and re-format it to what we have today,” Bradley said.

The Trivia Tuesday has been a traditional event during the week. Teams of up to 10 people compete to win the “nerdy” prizes including journals, mugs and Funko Pops. The trivia is divided into categories like books, movies, TV shows, science and a humanities section that ties with the humanities series courses the college offers.

The HonCon Activities Fair is another Geek Week tradition where students can learn more about MU’s “geeky” clubs and organizations. Some of the groups represented include the MU Writing Center, the MU Office of Service-Learning and the MU Career Center.

Will Costigan, a student ambassador at MU undergraduate research, which was one of the organizations present at the fair, said he appreciated the variety of subjects that can be studied at MU.

“Many people often associate research with STEM-related fields, but in MU, we do researches in various fields, like political science, art, visual design and other things you don’t normally think that associate with research,” Costigan said.

He said it is easier to get involved in the research field at MU than may be anticipated by undergraduate students

“Getting involved in undergraduate research looks great on a resume and will benefit your career and academic goals,” Costigan said.

A variety of groups were present sharing information about their club’s goals and the kind of students they are looking for to get involved.

Joe Chee, the co-founder of Ukatsu, helped organize the first [MU Fortnite Tournament](https://move.themaneater.com/stories/features/ukatsu-brings-a-new-attitude-to-gamer-culture) in August.

“There’s no official MU Fortnite club yet, but we’re looking for people to start that club and we’re willing to support them in any way possible,” Chee said. “I know there’s a League of Legends Club, Super Smash Brothers club. Fortnite is so big that you can you can easily make it a thriving Club in town.”

A few new events were added to the Geek Week series this year, including the Coffee Science and Art with Vida Coffee Co.

Rachel Neff, junior and member of the Honors Ambassdors Programming board, said the intuition she had when she started planning the event was based in the fact that while coffee was such a significant component of campus culture, many people didn’t necessarily pay attention to the detail that goes into making it.

“We hope through this event we can teach people some interesting, compelling facts about coffee,” Neff said. “Like the latte art is based on the fact that latte has more microfoams than other kinds of coffee which allows a firm consistency to do latte art, the existence of coffee cherry, and things along that. We hope these can help people depose the myths they might have and expose them to a wider varieties kinds of coffee to pick from next time they order coffee.”

Bradley said the word “geek” means more than its textbook definition.

“Personally, I think the word, geek, can be interpreted in many different ways. Typically in geek culture, we tend to see things like comic books, video games, board games. So we want to do a variety of events to showcase different parts of geek culture,” Bradley said.

She said that one of the main purposes of the event is letting students find others who are of like mind and help tone down the feelings of isolation for those in places where their interests aren’t prominent as the major culture.

Antonio Vazquez, junior studying information technology, said he looks forward to the geek week every year. His favorite part of the week is always the game night.

“Every year, I met new people. Even after the event, we would hang out and do more game nights stuff on our own,” Vasquez said. “I think everyone should give it a chance and you might find some events that you will enjoy.”

_Edited by Morgan Smith | mosmith@themaneater.com_