“Hot, boring, and uneventful”: this is how many freshmen described Fall Activity Day at Kualoa Ranch. While perceived by some as disorganized and uneventful, Fall Activity Day was ultimately a great learning experience for the organization of future events.

For Academy freshmen, Fall Activity Day took place on Friday, October 18th from 8:30 AM to 2:00 PM. This event intended to bring students together through many different team bonding activities. Mr. Taliaferro, an advisor and math teacher, said, “I really enjoyed it. I thought the activities were good in terms of being not overly challenging, but really good team building group exercises.” One could argue that the whole point of this special day was to do these types of bonding activities, but it seemed as if more was promised. Students wanted to do active, fun activities at Kualoa such as hiking or movie tours, but we never ended up doing anything related to these activities. 

After hearing that Fall Activity Day would be taking place at Kualoa Ranch, many 9th-grade students were intrigued. Tristan Kayas ‘28 said, “I thought it was going to be really exciting and fun to hang out with my advisory!” Being a 9th-grade student myself, I was overjoyed thinking about the “fun” that would come from Fall Activity Day. A waiver sent out to all participating students seemed to reference some of the expectations. It said, “…participating in activities at Kualoa Ranch Hawaii may involve walking, hiking, and working around undeveloped areas.” While we did walk quite a bit, we did not hike or work in any sort of underdeveloped areas at all. Students looked forward to exploring Kualoa Ranch and were excited to actively engage with the land, but that didn’t happen. Unfortunately, the activities mentioned in the waiver were replaced with other activities some students thought were boring or uninteresting. 

We took a pretty long bus ride of around 45 minutes to get to Kualoa Ranch. Upon arrival, the true nature of the “team building” exercises was revealed. Five stations were set up around a big field with different activities. There was no shade outside of the tents, and the sweltering heat soon became the main talking point among students. When asked about her least favorite part of the event, freshman Lily-Anna Heeler said, “[I disliked] the sun and how we could only connect with our advisory.” Wanting to spend more time with friends outside of their advisory was a shared frustration among students. However, seeing as how we will stick with our advisory for our whole high school careers, I think it makes sense that the day would center around advisory bonding activities. 

 While some of the students had positive comments about the event, others had negative ones. Freshman Riley Uclusin said, “I thought it was very disorganized and wasted a lot of people’s time.” There were big breaks between games, some breaks lasting up to 15 minutes, and many students cited feeling bored. That being said, we still have to realize that there are about 

400 students in the 9th grade alone, and organizing an event for all these students would be troublesome. Even then, many have asked: “What caused this disorganization”? 

Dr. Stice-Durkin, who helped plan Fall Activity Day, offered a lot of background information about the event, “Part of what you learn when you’re doing things like this is working with other people, [like] what your vision is, what they’re understanding of that vision is, and then the capabilities of the facility itself. We wanted it to be more of a day where students could do different things on the ranch, and so their interpretation of the capabilities of the ranch was keeping the group together.” Additionally, with Kualoa Ranch lacking experience in hosting large amounts of students, it was difficult for the event to unfold as planned.

With these things in mind, what will be done in the future to make this event more enjoyable and pleasant? After interviewing Ms. Navarro, who attended past Fall Activity Days, she reflected on one of the activity days she was involved with, “I hiked with over 20 students to hike the Makiki loop trail … we had snacks, and students got out of school a little earlier than usual, about two hours [earlier]. It was fun because it was structured and students picked which event they wanted to participate in.” Choice seems to be a big part of past experiences and certainly is an important aspect. Being able to choose what trip you want to go on, even if you don’t like it very much, seems better than having to attend the same event with others. 

Looking back to October, a lot can be dissected from Fall Activity Day. Through different interpretations of what was originally envisioned and unknowingly planned on both ends, the event was never going to be perfect. In a way, that “imperfectness” may have actually helped the events going forward, considering we can learn from past mistakes. After taking into account the intricate planning and hosting of this event, students may think differently about their previous disappointment. In multiple ways, Fall Activity Day is highly beneficial and future events will be able to boost off from this past experience.