New Clubs Series: Arts, Fun, and Games

Did you know that Marianopolis students created over thirty clubs this year? In this two-part series, founders share what drove them to turn their passion into a club. For this second part, I gave the mic to clubs devoted to art and… fun and games.

Marianopolis Musical Club 

The Marianopolis Musical Club is the brainchild of first-years Nancy Xiao and Xixi Wang, high school friends who wanted to bring the fun of theatre and music to Marianopolis. Says Nancy: “I was in a Shakespeare musical in primary school, and Xixi was in Matilda last year.”

Nancy mentions she has been passionate about musicals ever since seeing her high school’s production of Legally Blonde. Incidentally, the club will put on this production this year at Marianopolis.

Marianopolis Songwriters’ Society Club

The Marianopolis Songwriters’ Society Club is Yuna Kang and Angelina Xu’s way of keeping their commitment to songwriting in spite of their school workload. “I wanted to make the time and kind of force myself to write some songs during the school year,” explains Yuna. 

She and Angelina met in their high school’s Musique-Études program, which allowed them to write classical music. Yuna adds that she had been composing modern vocal songs since quarantine. 

Marianopolis Linguistics Club

Rayyan Lodhi and Peizhe Guan created the Marianopolis Linguistics Club after noticing that the school had very few language-related groups. The club’s activities include resolving linguistics problems and puzzles from the NACLO (North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition) and the IOL (International Linguistics Olympiad). 

The club’s president and vice-president wanted to share their interest in linguistics with a community, but they also have much more ambitious goals. They expressed their desire to “broaden the view on linguistics studies which is a relatively unpopular field of study.” 

The Crow Court 

The Crow Court? Yes, you read that right. Why is Marianopolis’ all new language-learning club named after a bird? “Crows are highly intelligent creatures known for their extensive communication and social skills. They are also known to mimic a wide range of animal noises,” explains club co-founder Aya Mehanna. She and her co-founder Alexa Bianchini wanted to create a group to unite language-lovers and inspire people to take up their hobby. 

The girls met through a quadrilingual high school program where they learned Spanish and Mandarin. However, they both have been learning new dialects for much longer. Aya, for instance, explains that she fell in love with language-learning in 7th grade, when she got interested in Japanese. She cites the everyday benefits for someone only starting out: singing along to non-English songs, understanding foreign films, recognizing languages while on the bus or at school… Alexa, who is part Greek, took Greek lessons as a child and continues to work on her skills. “I’d love to be able to communicate with people in their own maternal languages freely when travelling,” she says.

Mari Knit Pickers

Mari Knit Pickers is a merger between Rowan Hunter’s crochet club and Emy Xiao’s idea for a crochet and knitting group. Rowan, who created a similar club in high school, had a hard time running the Marianopolis Crochet Club alone last winter. Emy had the idea of forming a similar club over the summer and, at the club planning session, they fused into one.

Rowan’s love of crochet was fostered from the age of 6 by her grandmother, a talented knitter and crocheter. “I’ve always found it to be really calming and fun, and it makes me think of her!” she comments. Although Emy only started in high school, she says a lot of her inspiration for the club comes from “grandma knitting social clubs who get together and gossip while making sweaters.” 

Silly Trinkets Club

When Emily Yu and Betty Wang met through acquaintances, they bonded over their love of crochet. Hours before the club application deadline, they talked to Adam Reider, one of the Marianopolis’ Student Life animators, who informed them that another group had already signed up for a crochet-knitting club! But the enthusiastic, go-getter duo wasn’t ready to give up. A quick brainstorming session later, they had created the Silly Trinkets Club, which focuses on crafts like keychains and phone charms.

Based on their very aesthetic Instagrams, all the executives clearly have a knack for the arts. In fact, finance coordinator Emily confirms that she has liked crafts “since birth”. Betty, who coordinates the group’s very well-attended activities, mentions that she had always been into doodling and started making trinkets over the summer. The girls recruited a third executive, Elim Chan, a lover of all things silly and creative as well as fashion, to manage their also very aesthetic communications. 

Marianopolis Bubble Tea Society

Childhood experiences with boba inspired James Yin and Dong Lai Lu to create the Marianopolis Bubble Tea Society upon arriving at the college. They both remember sipping cold, milky tea with tapioca pearls as little kids after Saturday Chinese school. “I think that it’s really those memories that made us want to share our passion for the drink with Marianopolites.”

James shares a funny anecdote that reflects the casual and friendly nature of the group. During the first trial run making boba at school, the group was unfamiliar with the equipment necessary to produce large amounts of bubble tea. When they started the operation with only one bowl and one pot, chaos quickly erupted… James explains that they have since perfected their technique.

Escape Room Club

Second-year health science student Aashish Kalachand Bissoon talks passionately about his Escape Room Club. As a child, he was good with puzzles, Rubik’s Cubes, numbers and logic, and he admired the famed World War II code breaker Alan Turing. With these interests, it was no wonder “the moment [he] stepped into an escape room for the very first time, … it was love at first sight.” At age 11, he had discovered the thrill of putting clues together while racing against the clock. His personal record for breaking out of an escape room currently stands at an impressive 37 minutes. However, personal achievement isn’t the only benefit escape rooms have brought to this passionate problem-solver: “what I enjoy the most is collaborating with the people around me.” 

In high school, Aashish participated in student-designed escape rooms and eventually integrated the creative team. He wanted to bring this spirit to Marianopolis and give the chance to groups to solve a student-built escape room in February. “Best of all, every penny of the profits generated from our exciting escape room experiences will go directly to supporting charitable causes,” he adds.