As ways to promote and encourage connectivity with others during what is viewed by many to be disconnected times, two events were held at the Iowa City Kirkwood campus, both of which were open for all students to participate.
The first of these events was held on March 23, in the commons area. The event, hosted by the Iowa city chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, invited all interested to sit down with their fellow students and create friendship bracelets.
At the tables, participants strung beads along strings to create ornamental accessories, some of which bore encouraging messages such as Yes You Can, Try New Things and Keep On Going, while others were made out to significant others, family members and pets.
“It got people together. There was a good amount of people there,” said Aggatha Hingst, PTK member and lead organizer of the friendship bracelet event. “It’s a fun, easy craft that you don’t really have to think about all that much. It’s relaxing,” Hingst said of the craft’s accessibility. “Who doesn’t like making bracelets?”
The second event took place on March 30, and was also held in the commons area. The event, titled Conversation Meet-up, was part of a reoccurring series that takes place on the last Thursday of every month. At the event, participants were placed at tables alongside fellow students—many of which they had never met before—and given conversation prompts and the chance to form new connections.
Continuing with the theme from the bracelet event, the conversation prompts at March’s Conversation Meet-up were centered around questions and ideas of friendship. Participants asked each other questions such as, Who was your first friend? What do you value in a friendship? What do your friends like about you?
“I was really grateful to have the opportunity to write some of the questions and to reflect on what friendship means,” said PTK Vice President of Communications Bailey O’Brien, who created most of the prompts.
If the events served their intended purposes, then O’Brien was only one of many who were given the chance to reflect on friendship.
Staff Writer | Photographer
Categories: Feature
