Tag: Trivia Night

It’s Time for Trivia

It’s Time for Trivia

There’s nothing I love more than a good trivia night. Getting the chance to host one was right up my alley.

On of my communications electives this semester is Special Events Planning. One of our class projects was to secure an opportunity to volunteer at an event. Working directly with the event’s coordinator, we would gain hands-on experience planning and running an event.

I didn’t have a particular event in mind when this project was assigned, so I went to my supervisor in the Undergraduate Admissions Office, Mary Bennett. Thankfully enough, this assignment ended up helping both of us out. Part of Mary’s job as an admissions counselor is to coordinate overnight visits to Loyola for admitted high school seniors.  She needed a host for the trivia night taking place during the overnight visit and I was more than happy to help her coordinate this event.

Although I’ve never been to an overnight myself, I’ve heard great things about these visits and the unique way they let students experience Loyola. Overnight visitors have the chance to eat in campus dining halls, attend classes with their hosts, sleep in a residence hall and attend on-campus events. One option to keep students busy for the evening is going to a trivia night. Mary asked me to create the trivia questions and host the game on March 17th.

Since I’ve been to my fair share of trivia nights, creating categories and questions wasn’t all that hard. The six categories I created questions for were: food, movies, U.S. states, famous landmarks, Chicago and Loyola. The game was split into five rounds, with each round having one question from each of the categories. When answered correctly, each question was worth five points, except for the Loyola category which when answered correctly was worth zero points, and when answered incorrectly was minus five points. I put all of this into a PowerPoint so that I could use the auditorium’s projector for everyone to see the questions. I used the game Mary had created previously for reference and borrowed her answer sheet design.

I asked a friend of mine to come with me to the trivia night to help with scoring (and moral support). We went to the Life Sciences Building auditorium at 8:30 to set up for our 9 P.M. trivia. Unfortunately, another student group was using the room until 9. It took them awhile to clear out and for us to set up the projector, but we got our game underway by 9:20. 14 students and their hosts came, so we had two teams of seven.

“The Dream Team” vs. “Vince and the Ramblerz.”

The game itself went off without a hitch and the teams enjoyed some friendly competition. When the teams tallied their scores at the end “The Dream Team” had won by 5 points. “Vince and the Ramblerz” asked for a recount so my friend and I double checked the answers and scoring only to find out that “Vince and the Ramblerz” had done their math wrong and were the true victors of the trivia night. Luckily for everyone I had two bags of candy for prizes and let each team split a bag.

This experience was ideal in prepping me for the world of event planning. I got to be involved in the process from start to finish, had to deal with a minor crisis and managed to pull off a successful event.

If you want to put your trivia skills to the test, check out the game we played here:

Trivia Game