Shoutout to the anime club at my old high school in Springfield

This past Tuesday I dug out my old laptop from high school and found a folder full of our anime club's weekly discussion notes. We had this one week back in 2012 where we tried to watch and talk about the first three episodes of 'Steins;Gate' in a single meeting. It was a total mess! Half the club was lost on the time travel rules, the other half was just quoting Okabe's mad scientist laugh, and our club president spent the whole hour drawing a timeline on the whiteboard that looked like spaghetti. What made it stand out was how we all came back the next week with pages of our own notes and theories, and we actually had a focused, awesome talk. It taught me that sometimes you need a chaotic, bad discussion to figure out how to have a good one. Has anyone else had a club or group discussion that started rough but got way better?

3 comments

3 Comments

simonb921mo ago

Chaos just makes the next win feel better.

logan2051mo ago

Take that idea and run with it. Like when my D&D group first tried to run a campaign with six players who all wanted to be the leader. First three sessions were a mess. People talking over each other, no one knew whose turn it was, we had a whole argument about whether to save a goblin or let it die. But after that chaos, we finally figured out that one guy should be the main DM and the rest of us should just shut up and roll dice sometimes. That next session where everything clicked felt ten times better because we'd been through the garbage together.

dylan6041mo ago

Oh man, that's a cool story. I read something once about how messy first tries can actually help a group figure out how to work together. Sounds like your club nailed that.