Get in touch with your inner geek with UNC’s first Geek Week.
Hosted by New Student and Carolina Parent Programs, Geek Week sets out to celebrate students who identify as geeks through their passions for movies, TV shows, gaming and much more.
Maddie Reich, a senior working as student fellow for transition programming at NSCPP, helped spearhead Geek Week.
“I was talking to one of my supervisors about a book I was reading called ‘Chicks Dig Gaming,’” she said. “Through that, he discovered I was a geek — I played video games, read fan fiction and watched a lot of TV.”
Her supervisor said there are schools, such as Rutgers University, that dedicate a week to students’ unique obsessions, and Reich thought it was a good idea to have one here. She said she did a lot of research before proposing it to her supervisor.
And thus UNC’s Geek Week was born.
“I’ve been planning this since October,” she said. “I reached out to campus partners, asking them what they want to do for Geek Week.”
These partners include the Carolina Union Activities Board, UNC Department of Housing and Residential Education, the Undergraduate Library and University Career Services.
Brittany Soder and Kelsey Hammer, graduate assistants in the Research and Design Department of the Undergraduate Library, are co-running Dr. House’s GIF-Along Workshop.