Mix It Up Day embraces the awkward

Table 6 offered these students a space to talk with a group they regularly might not sit with.  “It’s fun. I get to learn new things,” freshman Elsa Runquist said.

Netta Kaplan

Table 6 offered these students a space to talk with a group they regularly might not sit with. “It’s fun. I get to learn new things,” freshman Elsa Runquist said.

The lunchroom seemed especially busy Oct. 28, with colorful paper perched on the tables and an Intercultural Club music selection faintly playing on speakers. The buzz of conversation was louder than usual. For the most part, people seemed to be “embracing the awkward,” the slogan of this year’s Mix It Up Day (MIUD).

Class leadership councils plan MIUD, when students sit by peers who share a number, whether they know them or not.

“All the leadership groups were hoping to revive it and turn it from something people dread to a new way to have fun,” JCLC member Sabrina Brown said.

MIUD always meets mixed reactions. For some, embracing the awkward is a good way to spice up a normal week: “It’s fun. I get to learn new things,” freshman Elsa Runquist said.

To help alleviate the possible awkwardness of eating with strangers, the student leadership councils provided sheets of questions to break the ice. “We’re doing questions, having fun,” senior Isabella LaBlanc said.

Given the fact that most freshmen and sophomores eat early lunch and most juniors and seniors eat late lunch, it was hard to have students mix it up as much as they could have, but many students did their best to sit with new people. “[They should] spread out the tables because there’s all the sixes over here. I guess it doesn’t really matter,” sophomore Colin O’Hern said.

Although the setup of the day may not be perfect yet, it still manages to achieve the day’s goal: getting people together in new and different ways. “I think it was pretty successful, though. There wasn’t really any flaw that I saw,” freshman Hunter von Tersch Pohrer said.