When life throws a curve ball, most of us stagger, and fall prey to negative thoughts! That is why it is important that we train ourselves to focus on the bright side of things, even during the hardest times. On this note, DAIS students decided to host a Round Square postcard, LaughTopia. On March 16th 2022 delegates from around came onboard the laughter express to experience an hour of rejuvenating experience and fun filled sessions.
The Planning: The students team spent many hours discussing the theme options and zeroed in on the topic of self-expression, however this had many aspects making it difficult to decide on which one. After endless discussions with the senior mentors and Round Square Reps, the team decided to go ahead with using HUMOUR as the tool to express yourself. Initially it became tricky as there is a fine line between humor and comic. Eventually it was decided that the postcard will focus on using humour to look at the brighter sides of situations in our daily life. Hereon, the students split themselves into teams and divided the work for effective execution. After multiple calls, word documents, discussions, and laughs later, LaughTopia was born! The next step was designing the invite, the logo, planning the breakout rooms, the video, the script etc. We identified our keynote speaker, our former drama teacher, Ms Meghana Gandhi, who was delighted to be part of LaughTopia. With her valuable inputs, the activities took a reflective form to ensure better engagements of the delegates.
The sessions: Ms Meghana enthralled the delegates as she spoke about being positive and conducted an activity called ‘Yes let’s’, which required active participation from the audience. This was followed by delegates moving into breakout rooms. Here the team had planned several games, such as Riddle Ride.There was a riddle displayed on the screen which was related to being happy and delegates had to answer this riddle. Next, they played a game called ‘Larry's Laughable Problem’. Delegates were given difficult situations and they had to think about how these could be positivized.
Lastly, they played a game called laughOmeter. Here, the delegates were shown a meme and they had to rate how funny it was. They laughed a lot and enjoyed these sessions. After the barazas the delegates returned to the main meeting and had discussions on the change of attitude they underwent. As a reflection they were engaged in ‘never have I ever’. A few humorous situations were presented, and delegates had to respond if they ever experienced these. Since most situations were related to student life, most delegates related to these and enjoyed talking openly about them.
Here’s what DAIS team felt:
“We really had a lot of fun while planning this postcard. Not only fun but we also learned a lot. We never felt pressured to do anything”.
“We could share our opinions openly and have a hearty laugh”.
“And at the end all our efforts paid off, LaughTopia was a super successful event”.