On the 26th of March, Communication and Media students held the usual Major Day. This event takes place every semester, so twice in an academic year; it’s an official program sponsored and created by the Student Government.
In my past years in the university, I have been to many Major Days, as this is one of my favourite events, which I always look forward to. It’s always a fun experience to attend with friends and fellow students from your year and other years! You can meet and get to know a lot of new people and spend time with the ones you already know and like.
This time I was able to participate in the Major Day from a bit of a different perspective, as I was part of the organising team this year. In this review, you can read about how the event went and how it turned out and what experiences I had as an organiser. Hopefully, this will make you want to come and see us next autumn!
The event’s programs are usually game nights with quizzes and contests, sometimes cooking; making a meal together and of course always an after party. Now, in the Spring semester we’ve had a little bit of a twist. We have included our teachers and faculty and welcomed them for a nice and casual roundtable discussion about their career and life with fun topics and questions to get to know them a bit more. We are happy that the Head of the Department, Dr. Rita Glózer, and Dr. Tibor Mester joined us in Szenes Klub for this chat.
Meanwhile, from 2 pm, we were rather busy at Szenes’s Terrace making „pörkölt” which is a Hungarian stew, with onion and slow cooked meat, in a „bogrács”, a big cauldron above open fire, we have used gas to cook, so stay calm, we didn't set a real fire in the Botanical Garden. This cooking style and food is very common here in Hungary, usually in summer and the beginning of autumn with friends and family at a garden party. Cooking together and talking next to the „bogrács” really brings people together as it has a very rural and countryside feeling; I have almost even forgotten I am still at university. Eventually, the food turned out to be delicious, as it was one of the best „pörkölt” I’ve ever had in my life. It was really soft, tasty and the company was amazing.
Before eating, we had to set the mood and spend the time somehow, my main job for this day. We figured we should do some quiz and trivia to engage with the others while still cooking, and after the roundtable talk ended. I had prepared topics such as movies, TV-series, music, science, Odd one out in advance and several questions for these. We even had a prize to win, custom made stickers for the major peers and everyone who participated! After eating we kept playing, but I guess the prize wasn’t even that important anymore because everyone participated at the same time. I could barely finish the question, and someone already shouted an answer, the Terrace filled with laughter and the sound of shouting. We went through almost all my questions, and we ended up having to google a few more questions and trivia for the music topic.
It was a special afternoon and early evening, but it was time to finish the game because we had a guest artist, Kinka. Kinka is an emerging singer, a fellow university student. She performed covers of Hungarian songs and musicalized poems for us. She has a scale of styles and a band, so make sure to check out her concerts sometime! Her performance was cozy and close-knit, with personal stories between the beautiful songs.
After the concert we continued the night with Beer Pong matches to “life and death”. Us, the organising team refereed and ran this event well, and a few of us even competed with the other teams with more or less luck. But it was a whole vibe with a lot of laughter and cheering, with some white-girl music in the background, adding the/a perfect score for dancing between rounds/ in the background added the perfect score for dancing between rounds. We closed this night with a smaller afterparty, keeping it nice and casual; it was a perfect ending for a perfect event.
My experiences as an organizer were very positive during this process. My favourite memories from this day are filled with laughter, fun chats, loud music, and, of course, the amazing taste of „pörkölt”. I’ve met many new great guys whom I’ll be happy to see at school. It was nice to spend quality time with my peers and classmates away from books, assignments, and classes. I do believe these events bring us closer, create a community, and a feeling of belonging. I am glad I could be a part of this and see people happy, having fun, and being carefree, knowing that we did this.
Photo: Georgina Szikora
