Sorry for anyone who winced – I know the title is a bit cringy.
In February and March this year, I hosted two major events for my high school’s math club: a Valentine’s Day Candy Gram sale and a Pi Day memorization contest.
At the beginning of February, my workload for math significantly dropped down after a month’s worth of intense studying for the AIME. I started to care more about other important aspects of my life, especially schoolwork. However, I thought of something that caught my eye during the last week of January.
Echoes was selling carnations for Valentine’s Day, a sale they were running for two weeks straight. Those folks even made a video, broadcasted on our morning announcements every other day.
If I could do a decent batch of hard math problems, then why can’t I organize a beneficial event for math club while extending our reputation from just another “academic club”? This lit up my competitive side and within a week of Valentine’s Day, it happened.
It was almost copy-cat: instead of selling carnations and delivering them to classrooms, I would sell lollipops and cards real-time.
Although it seemed to be easy at first, it turned out to be a lot of work. I organized a spreadsheet for volunteers. I planned out all logistics including the time, costs, expected profit, products. With the help of club members, I produced a thirty-second advertisement for the morning announcements. One of the other officers helped me discuss this idea with the club advisor.
It happened with much greater returns than we expected, despite the curtail of our sale due to a snow day. Mostly because of my two friends who brought in a stash of thirty to forty dollars, we had a net profit of forty dollars. Several people who were outside of the club came along and bought lollipops. A whole ton of people glanced at our table. Truly, without my spark of inspiration from Echoes and the help of numerous math club members, this event wouldn’t have succeeded.
About a month later, the inspiration of hosting a lunch event extended to pi day. This time, it was less work, but still a significant amount of coordination.
At this point, I’m running these events mostly by myself. I do it because I want to elevate math club’s perception. People don’t like to think about “math class”, but what if “math club” was an active, engaging club that hosts fun events monthly?
This is probably the first time in club history that it has appealed this much to high school students. I could be wrong, but even so, we’ve never done anything significant in the past two academic years that appeals to the general public.
Thank you to all club members who helped in these events and everyone who came to them.
There will be more…