UI Junior Board member Eric Sullivan shares the play by play of the JB Pizza Party!
On Monday, November 24th the gracious folks over at Kirkland & Ellis invited the UI staff, a dozen Junior Board members, and nearly 90 Work to Play students from Gunsaulus Scholastic Academy and Providence Englewood Charter over for our annual pizza party extravaganza. Braving the far-too-early arrival of the Polar Vortex, pizza partiers young and younger came looking for a good time, and they were not disappointed.
In addition to the fine, cheesy fare from Giordano’s, revelers enjoyed an evening of meeting new friends, introducing said friends to everyone else, and of course staging epic roshambo battles with anyone and everyone in sight (that’s the short and sweet word for rock-paper-scissors, or ick-ack-ock for our British supporters out there). Though a miracle, multi-food-group sensation, pizza didn’t completely dominate the culinary content of the event – grapes and carrots made their way onto everyone’s plates, to say nothing of the other fruits that ended up on people’s heads (you had to be there).
From informal surveying of my fellow party participants, the youngest contingent seemed to rank pizza and play at the top of their satisfaction lists, but staffers and board members couldn’t get enough of the group share. From hearing about one student who was very pointedly described as a former D-Rose fan to a JB member who allegedly went to no fewer than 3 colleges in the Chicagoland area, it was an eye-opening experience for everyone involved.
As for me, I think my most valuable lesson came from a student I met while manning the pizza line. He gently reminded me that asking for a slice of everything really means everything that doesn’t have green things on it – and isn’t that the kind of childhood wisdom we could all use a little more of?