Balloons, dancing and painting, oh my! On April 6, students participated in a wide variety of engaging activities during 8th period for this year’s Flow Day. With every event geared towards answering the current one question, it was a fun time for students to actively think about competition and community at TJ in unorthodox ways.

“To be honest, I just expected a bunch of sappy talks about building community and teamwork and honesty, but [Flow day] definitely exceeded my expectations,” freshman Kathryn Yang said.

Creative events such as Tai Chi, Latin Dance and Face Painting allowed students hands-on involvement in learned about the one question. Others activities were more geared towards a lecture style, with presenters talking through their perspective of the one question.

“[My favorite] was the Creative Writing event, but I also really enjoyed the one about creative responses to standardized test questions,” sophomore Jack McLaughlan said. “I liked the ability to freely walk around and choose activities as I went, not having to have signed up for something specific.”

However some students felt as if the one question, “How can we foster a sense of community in our inherently competitive TJ environment?”, restricted the freedom of the speakers, leading to less variety in terms of topics.

“Everything this year seemed to fall into a strong theme, the competitiveness at TJ,” McLaughlan said. “Last year it seemed like the talkers had more freedom with what exactly they wanted to talk about. To improve Flow day, I felt like there should either be more options to go to, or take away the restrictions of the one question to allow for even more variation.”

Overall, students felt as if this year’s Flow day was a success, helping the Jefferson community connect and to open talk about the stress over competing that many Jefferson students face everyday.

“I feel like I felt a sense of attachment with the rest of my peers during Flow day,” Yang said. “We all have generally the same experiences [as students], and so listening to these talks and doing these activities really glued TJ together as a community, since we’re connecting through similar interests and reminders of our struggles.”