Unlike the festivals held at other national universities in Korea, POSTECH is special in that the whole student body work together to organize it to make it a success. Every part of the festival, except for the guest singer, is student oriented. For example, the freshmen practice every night for approximately 4 hours to put on a show. The sophomores supervise the freshmen in their dance practices and prepare the night booths. If the students were not willing to participate in preparing for the festival, POSTECH would not have been able to host a festival at all. However, a student oriented festival takes up a lot of personal time. Thus there are both advantages and disadvantages to a student oriented festival from the students’ perspective. Several sophomores have been asked for their opinion, as they are the main hosts of this festival.
The main problem with a student oriented festival is that it consumes a large proportion of students’ time. If freshmen practice their performance, sophomores in majors such as MATH, CHEM, CE, IME, MSE, and CiTE need to both supervise the freshmen, while concurrently preparing recipes for alcoholic drinks and cuisine for their night booths, which are open from 6:30 P.M. to 3 A.M. On top of that, those who are involved in performance clubs need to spend extra time to practice to put on a somewhat high quality show. Sophomores are usually the main performers. Park Jang Hyun (LIFE 12) claimed, “too much time is taken away. There’s not enough time for academics or leisure. Performers may not mind spending their time for organizing a performance, as they probably want to do it. However, I think that students who do not really want to participate in the festival might have a negative perspective of the festival.” Oh Sunool (MATH 12) said “doesn’t the majority question why we are doing this?”
However, the festival does have its good points. UngHee Park (MSE 12) declared, “the feeling of achievement after the hard work makes the festival even better.” Moreover, while preparing for the festival, students may form a stronger bond with their peers. Cathy Cho (CSE 12) described “through the preparations, it gave us a chance to become friendlier with our colleagues and to operate our own small business. Moreover, we learned to be more responsible and cooperative by coming on time to the meetings and completing individual tasks. ”
Although most think that the focus is the on the day of the festival itself, the real meaning of the festival may lie in the preparations. Through the numerous hours of practice and preparations for the festival, students gain various experiences.