The inspiration came from what I call my “Doomsday Book,” it would be the equivalent of what people call their bucket list. It is full of ideas of things I want to do before “the world ends” or before I die. It is a little bit more hasty than a bucket list in that the idea is that any day could be “Doomsday” and that you should get as much done today as possible. So, zorb/bubble soccer was one of the things in that book. Then, I joined the Student Programming Board and I had to brainstorm events to put on during the year. I decided to go to my “Doomsday Book” for inspiration as they were mostly fun things that I wanted to do and decided to do that. I also realized that this would be a perfect EDGE project because I would be working with so many different organizations on campus and even individual people on my team and that this would develop my leadership skills.
 

One of the biggest challenges that I faced while doing this project was mitigating risks and working through Risk Management. The people in Risk Management were stellar as always, but this event required a lot of mitigation because it is inherently dangerous for students as it is a sport with lots of contact. This was compounded when the company that I was going to rent from told me only a week before the event that they had actually already booked someone for that day. I couldn’t find any new company so I had to purchase the bubbles myself which ate up all of my budget so I had to adjust.
 

I think my project benefited the students that got to participate and even those who wanted to watch on the sidelines. School is really stressful so events like this are super necessary. Another benefit to those students was that I could see a lot of them bond even if it didn’t go any further than the event itself. Social interaction and friendships are one of the biggest retention features for a school so I think this benefited both the students (with friendship and increased dedication to school) and the University (through increased retention).
 

My project helped me with my organizational skills. It is near impossible to carry something out like this without some sort of vision of what you want to happen and then having a plan to do that. It also helped me with my leadership skills in implementing that vision. I had to interact with so many organizations and parts of the University which helped with my communication skills both in emails and in person. Also, it was a stress reliever for me to see people having fun at something that I helped create.