The SNU Festival may have been vanilla to me, but if it was suddenly erased from the face of this Earth and someone who’d never experienced vanilla before asked me to describe it to them, I would say it was a staple, the backbone of flavor, a point of reference through which more exotic flavors like mint chocolate, cookies and cream, and ‘my mom is an alien’ were formed. That’s what the SNU festival was, vanilla, and it has finally returned in all its basic glory.

An SNU festival has traditionally been about food trucks and alcohol, picnics at the field of grass behind the administration building, and a concert by a celebrity who’s not as in vogue as the celebrities who perform at Yonsei or Korea University’s festivals. When the pandemic hit, university festivals were canceled nationwide and SNU freshmen were left wondering what this vanilla that older students considered so bland was. With the recent ease in restrictions, SNU hosted its first festival in almost two years, bringing back an event that we loved to complain about, but cannot deny that has formed the basis of some of the happier memories of our undergraduate years.

Festival events were scattered throughout campus. Student band Singstealer and dance group Hit the Stage performed at the cultural center, with students able to attend the performances live or through livestreams. Halloween-related activities took place near the dormitory, with a number of festival organizers dressed as brightly colored Teletubbies who sang, did magic tricks, and gave candy to passing students.

“I’m finally beginning to feel like I’m in college,” reflected the beneficiaries of the Teletubbies.

Even more activities took place online. A talk show was streamed on YouTube with YouTuber jinyongjin and colorful SNU personnel including a student whose combined one repetition maximum for squat, deadlift and bench press is 670 kilograms, a student who had traveled 43 countries, a student who collects insects, and a female student 180 cm tall. More details of their interviews and conversation can be found on the SNU Festival YouTube channel. Minigames took place on Zoom, and photo-editing competitions were held on Instagram.

Some interesting submissions from the SNU photo-editing competition

A snippet of the talk show streamed on YouTube

I was able to purchase SNU festival themed shot glasses and some other interesting merchandise. While watching the recording of the SNU festival talk show with my shot glasses, I came upon the startling realization that this was the first festival I was left with something apart from a terrible hangover. All this time I had taken the SNU festival for granted, and although my experiences had been pleasurable, there was nothing tangible with which I could remember and catalogue these experiences. By returning to basics, I remembered that the ordinary was extraordinary, and that all college experiences, no matter how vanilla they may be in the moment, must be treasured, for their retrospective value increases with time.

Trinkets from the SNU Festival

Written by Cheesue Kim (cheesuerocket@gmail.com)
Reviewed by Professor Travis Smith, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, tlsmith@snu.ac.kr