September 8^th, 2016

The orientation week of college is all about getting familiar with the institution, the faculty and to socialise. S P Jain planned the Orientation week in a unique way by organising an outdoor trip for the BBA-2016 Batch. Students travelled to Varsoli, 94 km south of Mumbai, en-route Alibaug, and stayed at the Sai-Inn Resort.

Their stay was filled with interactive sessions, games and team-building activities.

The Verbal Volleyball Game

A memory game that encouraged students to remember names, this game forced students to remember not only their team mates’ names, but the names of the players of the opposing team as well. After ten minutes of playing the game, they knew most of their batch mates’ names.

Knot Maze Game

While Verbal Volleyball was, in essence, a memory game, Knot maze was a brain teaser. In this game, each team first had to choose a leader. Once this was done, the remaining team members would wave to grab each other’s hands – left to right and vice versa – and change their positions – until the entire team became a tangled mess of arms and torsos. It was the job of the opposing team leader to untangle this mess, which more often than not was quite a challenge, requiring considerable spatial awareness.

The Frog Tales

Next was a game of attentiveness, requiring considerable concentration. The entire student body was made to stand in a circular formation. The first student would have to say “one frog” while raising his or her hands at ear level, the second would have to say “jumps in the water” while making a diving gesture and finally the third student would have to say “Boom” while clapping his hands. The second round would start with “two frogs” which would now have to be said by two students consecutively, as would the next two phrases. Each time a round ended, the number of “frogs” would increase along with the number of students parroting the same line, with the appropriate action. The first few rounds were simple. The difficulty spiked quite a bit with each increase in the number of “frogs”. Forgetting your place and repeating a wrong phrase, or forgetting the appropriate action lined to the phrase would make you lose. Needless to say, this game kept them on edge.

Musical Chairs with a Twist

Musical Chairs came next. There was a small twist to this game though. The students had to dance around the chairs, not just walk or run. Very few party games are as exhilarating, tension packed and rewarding as a good round of Musical Chairs.

After kick-starting the fun with these great bonding exercises the students went to the conference hall where the DJ and dance floor was all theirs. Not only did the students dance to every possible genre of music, they also witnessed the funkiest moves.

Shortly after dinner students were presented with another pleasant surprise. There was a bonfire arranged around which students gathered and shared various life experiences one by one. A prerequisite was that they must share something weird about ourselves. After what had been an eventful day, the students headed back to their rooms, played various board games and called it a night eventually.

September 9^th 2016

Wakeup calls are usually not welcome - especially if the sun hasn’t risen yet. The lure of visiting a beach, made an exception. While at the beach, the students engaged in numerous more team-building activities.

Pirates

A rectangle was etched in the sand, with each team standing behind each side. A circle was etched at its centre, where a number of caps were kept. A member from each team would be chosen at a time, to run to the centre of the circle, grab a cap, and deposit it in front of their team. Once all the caps were claimed, the players had the option of stealing their opponent’s caps. After a certain-time limit, the points would be tallied, and another member would be chosen from the teams. This game was comical as it was fun. Why? Running was an option in only some of the rounds. In others, players would have to crawl, duck-walk, frog-jump their way to victory. Hilarity ensued.

The Art of Communication

Communication is essential. It is however a difficult art to master. This is what this next game taught the students. The goal of the game was to send a single player from each team and kick a ball placed somewhere in the ring. The catch – the player would be blindfolded, and the rest of the team would have to guide him. The second catch? The team would not be allowed to use conventional directional terms like “left”, “right” “L”, “R” and “North”, “South” to guide their player. They would have to come up with their own term for directions, like for example using different animal sounds to denote the different direction. 

Once the games concluded and the winner was declared, everyone split into groups. Some playing football, others walking along the sea shore and others just lazing around, sitting in the water, being buffeted by the waves.

No one was pleased when they were told that the time was up, and that it was time to return to the resort. Of course, at this point of time, no one knew that after breakfast, the students would all be getting into Sai-Inn’s swimming pool. Swimming pools are inherently fun. Lobbing volleyballs at each other while in a pool are is even more so, and that is exactly what students did.