A word of advice – if you’re planning on competing in a local scavenger hunt, you might want to find some teammates who know the area. And have an action plan. And maybe don’t walk two miles when you have a car and there’s a time constraint.
Last week, the MarCom team took part in a local scavenger hunt in the Utica area. Starting at the Irish Social Club, we downloaded an app and set off into the city to follow the clues and the hints. We had a few options for tasks to complete – take a picture, a selfie, or a video, scan a QR code, answer a trivia question, or drive to a location and log it. And, while I would love to say we did well, I couldn’t without it being a lie. Unfortunately, the odds were stacked against us from the start, with the majority of our team not being from the area. As such, we missed and misunderstood a large majority of the clues, drove to places that weren’t on the list and we got back to the end point after two hours in a far more confused state than we had been when we left. While the other teams were asking about what pizza shop the clues were about, we were in the background asking each other “there was a pizza shop in the clues?” Unsurprisingly, we finished in last place.
However, I wouldn’t say it was a complete loss. As a whole, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We laughed and danced and got to see a lot of the area we live in and have never seen before. I think, were we not so good at laughing at ourselves, this might not have been a great experience, but we found the humor in our inexperience and our frantic attempts to Google niche Utican facts (to no avail). We got to know each other, and Utica, a little better, and I personally think that knowing the people you work with makes for a much better work environment.
I’d do this again next year, but definitely with a different strategy. Maybe I’ll make that a goal for the end of my internship – present the MarCom team with a scavenger hunt proposal so next year’s MarCom Scavenger team can stand a chance against the local Uticans who know and understand the area far better than we do!
Chat soon,
Hannah Jo