September 16 – 20 marked the week of the State High Club Fair, a time for clubs of all kinds to gather in the hub and show what they have to offer. The club fair is a time for students to learn about what they like and find people with similar interests.
Junior Caleb Hatfield, DECA’s Director of Hospitality, described the benefits of joining a club like DECA.
“DECA is a competitive business club at the high school that is all about developing your soft skills, your public speaking skills, and getting to network,” Hatfield said. “An average day at DECA looks like preparing a practice presentation that we call a role play in preparation for the competitions. People should join our club because it is the most fun club at State High and that is why it has more people in it than any other club. There’s a lot of fun trips for competitions and opportunities, and it does develop a lot of real-world skills that we use, no matter what field you go into.”
Senior Henry Feinberg shared a bit about his club World Cafe, where he is an ambassador.
“It is [about] meeting people from different walks of life. It is a time for cross-cultural exploration, and I would say it’s a fun and a very inviting, inclusive community. [On a normal day] it would consist of probably, conversations about culture differences within cultures, language differences, things that some people do and some people don’t, and playing games. Sometimes they’re not even pertaining to culture, really. It’s just a time to have fun, [and] meet people,” Feinberg said.
English as a second language teacher, Melissa MacNeely, had more to say about the club.
“I think we just have a lot of great opportunities at our club to get to meet new people from different cultures that speak different languages, and people you might not interact with on a daily basis in your particular classes. So it’s an opportunity that kids who are new to the building, coming from different places in the world to kind of get together and connect with people that are from a similar background,” MacNeely said.
Many students were eager to show what their clubs have to offer. Junior Ella Qiu and senior William Zhang described the opportunities offered by their club, Science Olympiad.
“I guess Science Olympiad is a competition-based club where people have fun building, testing their builds, doing labs, and overall, having fun doing competitions against their peers and seeing how they do,” Qiu said.
“People go to a classroom in A2. There’s some announcement about [an] upcoming competition or invitational, and then you have the rest of the hour to work on your project, talk to other people, [and] prepare. So there’s a lot of preparation,” Zhang said.
The club fair is a great opportunity for freshman or new students to have a look at the many clubs and activities State High has to offer.
