{"id":11610,"date":"2026-07-21T20:06:56","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T01:06:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/?p=11610"},"modified":"2026-08-02T02:13:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T07:13:57","slug":"from-birthday-cakes-to-talent-shows-mandatory-fun-delivers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/07\/from-birthday-cakes-to-talent-shows-mandatory-fun-delivers\/","title":{"rendered":"From birthday cakes to talent shows, Mandatory Fun delivers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">On Thursday night, July 2, community and academic associate Sami McKenney came up to the stage at the McCormick Foundation Center forum and announced that after check-in, there will be a \u201cMandatory Fun event.\u201d Cherubs exchanged glances, looked around and wondered, what in the world is Mandatory Fun?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Lucy Camp of Mountain View, California and I were called to the top section of the Jones Hall Great Room. Sami asked us, \u201cDo you know what you two have done?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Following a few seconds of awkward silence and held breaths, Sami revealed that all we did was turn a year older: Everyone would be celebrating our birthdays. The cherubs serenaded Lucy and me in a loud rendition of the happy birthday song before Sami unveiled the CAAs&#8217; final secret: cakes!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After spending all evening baking in the first-floor pantry, the CAAs showed off their creations, ending the night with a sweet treat.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But Mandatory Fun goes much beyond just birthdays.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just two days later, cherubs enjoyed Niche Presentation Night, which gave students the opportunity to present anything they wanted as a slideshow to their fellow cherubs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The next Mandatory Fun event was Instructor Jeopardy, a fan favorite. Every instructor group was given eleven pieces of paper, each with one of the instructor&#8217;s names on it. When a question was asked, the groups held up a paper with the instructor they believed was the answer. John Kupetz\u2019s group emerged victorious after being the only group to correctly answer the Final Jeopardy question of which instructor\u2019s daughter was inducted to the U.S.A. Gymnastics Hall of Fame.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The cherubs&#8217; last Mandatory Fun event was the long-awaited Cherubs Got Talent. Cherubs performed 10 acts ranging from a Saturday Night Live Weekend Update sketch to a capella groups and poetry.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While we weren&#8217;t actually &#8220;required&#8221; to have fun, we voluntarily made friendships and lifelong memories.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unexpected evening events transformed strangers into friends through laughter, creativity and shared experiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":11674,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[686],"class_list":["post-11610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-experiences-featured-story"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":686,"user_id":311,"is_guest":0,"slug":"heit26","display_name":"Carter Heit","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fe6edef328effce4a9204ccf16923a2b02f6a6876fe1620b613f44e14f056b81?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Heit","first_name":"Carter","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11610"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12868,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11610\/revisions\/12868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11610"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2026\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=11610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}