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Nerds just wanna have fun, right? Right. Friday, September 9th at 7:30 pm the ZSR hosted the pilot program Find Your Nerd Herd.

The menu: S’more roast

The fun: Cornucopia of games generously donated by ZSR staff. Corn hole. A button maker, coloring pages, and letterpress stationery by Craig Fansler (stamps provided of course).

The outcome: The surprise of the evening was the popularity of the stationary. Students came and stayed for hours, decorating envelopes, coloring, and writing notes. People thanked me for providing international stamps to write to family and friends abroad. A faculty fellow brought a group of residents and played Cranium for an hour. We had a group arrive at 7:30 pm on the dot and play Yahtzee until we turned out the lights. Everyone was delighted by the s’more bar, and we also had popcorn varieties for a salty contrast.

In all, we had between 30-40 students stop by, and predictably, they would have liked to stay much longer than 9 pm advertised event conclusion. We had 13 surveys submitted and 7 of those surveys indicated they were first year students. Some of the highlights from the comments section of the surveys:

“YES. Found my nerd herd :)”

“Awesome! Do this again!”

“SO MUCH FUN!! I LOVE MAKING BUTTONS AND INTERNATIONAL STAMPS”

“I had a lot of fun! Please do this again!”

I was inspired to do this program because as a student at Wake Forest, socially, I did feel like a nerd sometimes. I knew there were other nerds, but it was hard to find them because social events don’t really favor introverted people. I would have loved this event, especially as a first year, and that’s why I wanted to try it. Of course, any successful event is the result of a solid team. Thank you to Susan Smith, Dean Pyatt, Hu Womack, Mary Beth Lock, and Meghan Webb for all of the help in making this event happen. To Nerd Herds! That’s what college is about anyway, right?