Who can pass up on the humble PowerPoint night?
A true stalwart of the red card, a PowerPoint night involves getting up in front of your friends and blathering to them about some obscure topic, all bundled together in slideshow format.
Seem like fun, right? Yet does it not also just sound like work?
After grinding away at university for the day, doing a niche subject no one else but you cares about, you then come home to do a PowerPoint night which forces you to replicate this exact process.
So, what’s the go here?
Are students becoming trapped in their degrees, unable to talk about anything else even while drinking?
I would say the jury’s still out on that one. As I wrote this, I was midway through preparing a presentation to be used at my flat’s most recent installation of the beloved pastime.
Thankfully, it’s not on politics which I study day to day but instead it focuses on the attributes and accolades of our friends which will determine their ability to surf.
Also known as ‘ranking our friends on how we think they could surf’ the topic is downright judgmental, but frankly a laugh whoever comes out on top.
Other topics include, ‘Who would survive if we were all in the hunger games?’ ‘How to start a flash mob’ and ‘Japan’s Unit 731’.
Few of us study flash mobs religiously and there is almost no background information on any of the other topics.
Maybe others do it differently, but if our PowerPoint night proves anything it does suggest that we aren’t chained to our degrees in a sad kind of way.
So, what is it then?
What makes the PowerPoint night so quintessential to the student calendar?
Checking out the list above it seems that a key facet of the PowerPoint presentation is to make targeted jabs at your closest mates.
Admittedly we all love this, but when it comes from a PowerPoint, the jabs almost seem endowed in a special sacredness.
Therein lies the beauty of the PowerPoint night I believe.
The more time you spend with your friends, the more you realise, ‘these people are crazy, and I love it’.
Only when told by a friend does a farfetched conspiracy sound plausible or a jab which would be incredibly rude when told by anyone else.
A PowerPoint night amplifies this feeling of love in all its diversity, allowing you to nod your head with exuberance as you listen to the yarn they’ve spun 6 times before.
Corny as it may seem, the PowerPoint night simply wouldn’t be the same without friends and therein lies the magic.
After a hard day of studying/procrastinating by writing this column, the company of friends really is all I need to be happy.
• Hugh Askerud is a politics and religious studies student at the University of Otago
