News
Date: 2020-12-21

Students Compete in Winter Challenges

Although conditions this winter prevented SDSU Georgia from hosting the same kind of in-person end-of-semester event as previous years, Student Services came up with a creative way to give students a break from their studies and share some much needed holiday cheer. 

In lieu of an in-person or Zoom event, students were invited to compete in three challenges. The event began on November 24th and students had until December 7th to submit their entries to whichever challenges they wanted to participate in.

The first challenge was called “My 2020 Winter Holiday Abroad.” As travel is all but impossible this winter, students were invited to imagine their dream vacation and create a short film detailing the holiday that wasn’t. The videos were judged by a panel of judges from SDSU Georgia staff. 

The first-place prize of 300 GEL went to Nino Kacharava, who described her star-studded winter trip around the world. The second-place prize of 200 GEL was awarded to Iko Gejadze and Mea Chikovani took the third-place prize of 100 GEL.

The second challenge, “Why So Serious,” encouraged students to send in recordings of their favorite jokes. They were invited to submit jokes for as many of the five categories as they wanted. The categories were: longest joke, dumbest joke, roasting COVID-19, fake news headline, and shortest joke.

The three winning participants, Nini Gogatishvili, David Gogia, and Nino Kacharava, each received a prize of 200 GEL for their comedic prowess.

The third challenge was Are You Up to the Task?” In teams of three, students were given a list of eight tasks to complete as quickly as possible. The tasks ranged from athletic tasks, like running a 5k, to philanthropic, like sending a pizza to a friend or family in need. The tasks could be split between the group members in any way they chose.

The winning team completed all eight tasks with proof in an impressive 2 hours and 31 minutes. Each member of the team, made up of Ani Chichua, Irakli Chichua, and Teona Iobashvili, received a prize of 200 GEL. Ani Chichua said afterward, “The 2020 winter challenge was an extremely unique experience that filled my day with lots of fun memories. It gave me and my group members such an adrenaline rush that we started doing the tasks right after we read the email and couldn’t even tell how much time it took to complete them all. Fortunately, we were the fastest!”

Although meeting with our students in person remains impossible, events like this bring the SDSU Georgia student community together. As participant Nino Kacharava said, “The winter challenge contest helped me forget the inevitable stress of finals week and reminded me that university is not all about exams. I enjoyed writing the humorous speech and putting together a Christmassy video; dressing up for different countries in ten minutes was so much fun.”