Student Activities Blogs

Miguel Almodovar

My Trip to the NACA Nationals in St. Louis

At 4:30 in the morning on February 16th my alarm blared telling me it was time to get going. Myself and three other UCONN students were about to get on a plane bound for St. Louis and go to NACA nationals. NACA stands for the National Association of Campus Activities; it is a gathering of colleges from around the country to get programming ideas for their campuses. I was chosen to go because of my involvement with SUBOG as the Comedy Chairperson. The conference is divided up into three different activities: Education sessions which work on your leadership skills, they sound kind of boring but sometimes they teach you some pretty cool things. The other two activities are really exciting though - the first are Showcases which is a huge room with a stage and you get to watch a huge variety of acts from comedians to poets to jugglers to magicians. The craziest act I saw there was this guy who juggled running chainsaws! I really thought he was going to cut his hand off but he didn’t thank goodness. The last activity at NACA is the Marketplace. It’s this huge room about the size of a football field filled with representatives from all of the acts at the conference, and they want you to book their acts so as you walk down the rows they are basically throwing their materials at you. And since you have to wear these names tags they call out your name which is really confusing at times. So the whole thing is barely organized chaos but you get to see a lot of cool stuff. I got to hold this monkey!

This is Mindy, she is a capuchin monkey and she makes little chirping sounds, it’s adorable.

I also got to meet Bobby from Tila Tequila he was pretty cool. I also got to ride a Mechanical Bull it was great! But the point of NACA is to get programming ideas so I did that too. I have some great ideas for next year with SUBOG. Besides the conference we had a bit of time to explore St. Louis we saw the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi River and we found a bar/restaurant that sold whole Steak Sandwiches! It was sick. So that’s all for now, be safe and enjoy the lovely UCONN weather, lol.

The Central girls and the UConn boys in front of the Arch. The girls were pretty cool I have to say, the guys were too of course.