SERC Shenanigans

A couple of days ago, my friends and I traveled east to Gainesville for an event called the SASE Southeast Regional Event. It's essentially the SASE National Convention but on a much smaller scale.

Honestly, I wasn't planning to take this event too seriously. I already had an internship lined up, and the companies hiring at the event were not ones I was particularly interested in.

The main reason I wanted to go was to meet new people outside of FSU and to have an excuse to leave Tallahassee. I also had never explored Gainesville in-depth, so I saw this as an opportunity to see what was around.

Overall, I had a great time! I got to meet lots of new people, wander around Gainesville, and bond more with my friends. So, here's a quick rundown of our day.

We left Tallahassee at about 8 AM. The event was set to start at 10, but given that Gainesville was a two-hour drive away, we were bound to be a bit late.

Eventually, we arrived and parked in one of the parking garages near the Reitz Union. The three of us walked into the union, a bit lost at first, but eventually found some event volunteers who directed us correctly.

By the time we entered the main room where the opening ceremony was taking place, the ceremony had ended, and everyone was already heading out for the first workshop. Still a bit lost, we decided to go with the flow and followed the crowd.

We ended up in a smaller room where the workshop was about to go into the benefits of teamwork.

Just before the workshop began, something funny happened. One of my friends decided to try on the free T-shirt we got at the event. He wore the T-shirt over the button-down he was already wearing, but when he tried to take the free T-shirt off, he got stuck. It was super hilarious and I offered to help him take it off before the workshop started.


A couple minutes pass by and the workshop begins. They started talking about why it's good to work in teams. I wasn't really too interested since it I feel like it seemed pretty obvious why it's beneficial.

There was an activity where we had to look at a slideshow with lots of items and try to remember them. After that, we got together with others to see how many more items we could remember as a group.

Right before we left for lunch, we found a huge chess board at the union and decided to play a quick game.

A guy from the University of South Florida came up and watched us for a bit. When we asked, he said he was rated 2000 in chess, which means he's better than 95% of players, so it was pretty cool to meet someone that good.


During the car ride, we decided to head to Yummy House for dim sum.

A funny moment happened while we were stopped at a red light next to a Maserati. My friend thought it would be funny to stare at the driver, so he rolled down the window and just looked at them for the next 10-15 seconds. As soon as the light turned green, we zoomed right off.

We eventually arrived at Yummy House. I would say overall that it's a pretty standard dim sum restaurant. The food was good and there were a lot of options to choose from. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give it a 7.


After enjoying dim sum, we headed back to the Reitz Union for the next part of the day: the networking session.

We got there a bit late, but the networking session turned out to be a large social activity. Volunteers gave us bingo cards and pens. The aim was to mingle and find people who matched the traits listed on our cards.

So, we split up and started talking with different people.

As I was wandering around, I began having a ton of conversations. One that I distinctly remember having was with a person who came from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. It started as your typical conversation with a college student where we asked what year of college we were in and what we were majoring in.

At some point in our conversation, I asked him about his ethnicity, and he told me he was Filipino. I don't know why this thought popped up, but when he told me that, I responded by saying, "Let's go start a Filipino army."

He told me to follow him to his other friends from ERAU. They also happened to be Filipino, so we began talking about where our family is from and funny stories from when we were younger.

At some point, at least ten of us stood in a circle, but it was a pretty funny scenario when looking back at it.


After the networking session wrapped up, it was time for another workshop. We started heading into one of the smaller rooms for it, but we decided to go bowling instead. So, we ditched the workshop and headed straight to the bottom floor to go bowling instead.

Let's just say that I'm not exactly a pro when it comes to bowling. To be more direct, my bowling skills are entirely atrocious. I was behind my other two friends by more than double the amount of their points. I forgot the endgame scores exactly, but I'll list three scores, and you can guess which was mine.

Score 1: 45
Score 2: 130
Score 3: 120

Nothing too interesting happened during the ceremony. It was mainly the coordinators thanking us for coming and discussing what we should look forward to soon. They hosted a raffle with prizes such as a Lego set, a mechanical keyboard, and a speaker, but we weren't lucky enough to win anything, so we walked out empty-handed..

Now, it was time for the main event, the career fair..

Only two companies were at the fair: P&G and Lockheed Martin. As I mentioned earlier, I already had an internship set for the summer, so I had no intention of waiting in line to talk to the recruiters.

Instead, I started roaming around with a plate of brownies and began offering a piece to the waiting people in line.

A funny thing that we saw was seeing someone dressed up as the Charmin Bear right by the P&G table. We couldn't pass up the chance for a photo with the bear.


It was starting to get a little late by then, so after meandering around a little longer, we decided to walk around Gainesville for a bit and grab dinner.

Having never thoroughly explored the area around UF, it was enjoyable to walk around the place at night and see what types of restaurants, stores, and bars were around. We stopped by an album store, the first time I'd ever gone to one.

After walking around for about an hour, we settled on having dinner at Bagels & Noodles, about a 5-minute drive from where we were. The three of us ordered the same thing: pho dac biet.

While waiting, one of my friends and I discussed our spice tolerance and whether or not we could handle sriracha. To follow this, we each took turns squeezing sriracha sauce in our mouths, where each time, we increased the amount until one of us couldn't stand the heat. It was a game of chicken.

Our food eventually arrived, and it was delicious overall! On a scale from 1-10, I would rate it as a seven or an eight. Of course, before eating, we had to get a picture.


We returned to the car shortly after eating and began the two-hour drive back to Tallahassee.

Overall, I had lots and lots of fun going to the event. Although we were goofing around the whole time, I had much fun with my friends and getting to know them a little more, especially since they'll graduate soon.

I'm looking forward to next year's regional event!

Thanks for reading! :)