I Ruined My Own Aggie Fest & I Don’t Regret It.
I don’t hate parties. I hate wasting my liquor on an event filled with played-out DJ mixes and dry small talk.
Maybe I’m too old or maybe this just wasn’t a good week for me.
Either way, what I thought would be a week of my ass out, was a week with my ass in the house.
If you aren’t already hip, Aggie Fest is a week-long celebration at North Carolina A&T State University. It’s a spring homecoming, but instead of putting the alumni, local community and, football at the forefront, we focus on the students. From block parties and gym jams to day parties (darties) and the fan fest carnival, you can usually expect to feel like death at least twice during the week.
Yes, that sounds brutal, but after all, we are in college. And I have felt like I wanted to die almost every single morning I found myself hurled over my toilet throwing up the previous day back-to-back activities.
See I could write a piece that completely grazes over the real raunchiness of this week but who would that benefit? In the past liquor has populated every inch of my liver, blurring my vision and heightening my sensitivity to the base of Chief Keef’s Faneto, which you can guarantee will be played at every single function you attend.
My yearn to be wasted doesn’t take away from my ambition to graduate one day and make my university proud. I need these moments of complete freedom to let loose and have fun. To dance all night and hang out the back window of an uber, so that I can tire myself, and want to rid of my Bacardi bottle to re-bury back in my books.
If I am being transparent, going into the week I was feeling a bit doubtful. This whole semester I haven’t been in a party mood. The thought of standing on my feet for hours intoxicated didn’t appeal to me. I was still quite hopeful that I would want to participate because every year presents itself with new opportunities to create memories, content, and documentation of an authentic HBCU experience.
When I first came to NCAT I would spend a lot of my time watching vlogs of current students. Their chaotic days started with classes or errands and ended in parties and events. Videos directly translated to conversations and debates on Twitter. 4 years later, what I viewed as a “Twitter & Youtube” school has completely blossomed into this hub for content creation on Tiktok and Instagram. I am not saying that students didn’t utilize all 4 platforms then and now, (because they do) the content that is being created is just presented differently. The difference is that it is packaged and delivered faster. I have an appreciation for this change.
A part of it has to do with this idea of collaboration.
Collaboration always existed on our campus but because I was stuck in my dorm huddled in my shell learning and growing, it is now that I can see it first hand.
It’s easier to make a 30-second video or a collaborative post on Instagram than it is to plan and execute a 10-minute Youtube video. And though Twitter is short and quick it doesn’t seem to be the main outlet of expression for our students anymore.
The week leading up to Aggie Fest I found myself sitting in on brainstorming sessions. Like-minded organizers and creatives came together to plan content around the events and spirit week. Students aka my friends were excited to fulfill old traditions and start new ones. It was supposed to be a full spectacle for me but it wasn’t.
Maybe it would have been if I were a part of a large organization on-campus or if I hadn't been trying to crawl out of a mental block for weeks, but I guess we will never know.
I kind of knew how it would all go down when I didn’t secure a ticket to the probate and opted to stay home to do my hair rather than go out to the party following it. A combination of my anxiety and the want to lay in bed outweighed my lingering desire to stand on club couches.
Still holding on, the next day I went to a darty and that shit was wack, because it was like every darty I had been to in the past four years. And yes there is still a need to continue the tradition, I just think that need for me no longer exists.
I went to the aux cord wars event halfway through the week, where students from the crowd got to battle against each other playing our individual choice of songs based on specific categories in hopes of winning the crowd over and securing prizes. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and even won the category I had volunteered for, female anthems. But this one event alone wasn’t enough for me to retract my statement that I ruined my own Aggie fest.
So when the week ended & I had only been to 3 events in total and had about 10 photos from those events that all lacked luster, I realized I didn’t have anything to show for.
It was still very important for me to report on this week from my perspective because I now knew what it was like to experience from both ends of the spectrum. It wasn't a bad week it just wasn’t what it was “supposed to be.”
When everyone was winding down and recovering I sat on my bed wondering how I could capture the essence of Aggie Fest from my room. It was here that I remembered that I wanted to take a stab at Scanography.
So I dumped all the actual stuff in my purse, along with a few items I had used this week on my printer scanner, and got to creating.
The process was quite simple.
All I did was scan the items. Edit the scans in Lightroom. Combine scans into collages on Picsart to fit the 4:5 dimensions.
Done.
10/10 experience.
I think the physical items we need to maximize our experience speak volumes, even if they aren’t being utilized to their full potential all the time.
I hope these photos disappoint all the people who think that the documentation of our fun should be confined to cookie-cutter, thumbs-up photos in school crewnecks at sanctioned events. It’s not realistic.
Black students are allowed to exist fully in and outside of the classroom. If you’re like me and you choose to stay home and not take it to the extreme, that is fine too.
