Illinois Institute of Technology has its fair share of events organized on the weekdays. Be it research seminars, career fairs, development, networking, or entertainment, we have everything lined up, and all thanks to multiple organizations playing around the campus clocked in actively to load up students with amazing experiences and help them grow both in personal and professional well-being. The most common occurrences can be from the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) LeetCode and Lunch, Indian Student Association (ISA) functions, Illinois Tech Career Service events, etc.
I have been casually communicating with students around the campus to draft a survey about their experiences regarding these events and suggestions they may have, if any. This article includes some of those opinions from our Scarlet Hawks. My observation is that they love the arrangements of almost all the events, but there lingered a slight suggestion of alternatives every hawk, national or international, was expecting to come into practice.
Let’s illustrate this with a recent happening for clear understanding. January 23, 2025 was a jam-packed day, having both the ACM General Body Meeting and the Scarlet C Suite Resume Efficiency by Illinois Tech Career Service. While each one had its own significance, the instance of happening both at the same time, 1 p.m. and the same day, was a bit inconvenient for hawks to attend.
Being a part of Illinois Tech, I was caught up in this same boat multiple times, one of which was when I had to give up on my favorite ACM event LeetCode and Lunch for another networking seminar, but the feeling of missing a few interesting things and not having all flushed my brains every now and then I miss an event.
Being in a position to choose one over the other keeps us off the juggling to get the most out of everything going on at the campus. The hawks I spoke to not only mentioned the inconvenience but also suggested possible alterations such as, “Why can’t we can have events arranged on separate days a week at the same time, and those times shouldn’t be blocked by any class schedules?”
Successful campus events are all about how welcoming and wide-ranging they are. Busy calendars full of relaxing, energetic sources would have any student wanting to give up on in these contradicting situations due to the burnout. Collaboration between student organizations and the Illinois Tech team to plan timings might create a space of consideration and excitement for all.
In the end, our goal is to improve student life, which is motivational enough to bridge the gaps the current setup is having.