Student blogs

Sawing a boat in half, drilling wood, painting walls, cooking liters and liters of paper mache glue-  these are definitely things I didn’t expect to be doing at KI. But by joining the Student Nobel NightCap (SNNC) I was able to do all of that and more. 

The Student Nobel NightCap is the afterparty continuation of the Nobel Banquet on the 10th of December that is entirely organized by students from different universities in Stockholm. It is attended by Nobel laureates, politicians, and other prominent people. I got the role of the decor manager for the main room. As an artsy person, getting to spend hours after uni to just be creative and craft things was such a fun and unique experience. 

Here’s what it was like:

Lab, eat, SNNC, repeat

When construction week came along, my days looked like this: I would go to class or the lab, eat lunch and then go to my four hour shift at SNNC (which luckily was on campus since this year SNNC was at KI.) Planning and sketches for my room had to be done already before it came to construction week, but it was when construction week started that things got really busy. There was a lot that had to be done. We had to convert more than 10 rooms into different sub-themes. To mention a few: there was a lava room, a space room, an underwater room, a flowery room- all under the theme “the Wonders of Nature.” My room was meant to be converted into a vibrant, stormy ocean.

Do we build a boat? Or do we buy a boat?

A big issue we came across was that the centerpiece in my room was supposed to be a sinking ship. It got a bit chaotic the second week of construction because we weren’t sure whether the boat should be built or if we could maybe buy a real boat to put into the room. I spent some time sketching the boat dimension on the floor, but luckily we were able to get a real boat which was cut in half and positioned in the center of the room.

Building waves, clouds, crates, and a massive octopus

There was much more to the room than just the boat. My main goal was to cover all the walls in big 3D crashing waves to give the effect of being trapped at sea when you walked into the room. But…how exactly do you do that? What materials do we use? How do we make it stable? How do we make the waves all connect? These are all questions that we had to answer as we built the waves. It was admittedly quite stressful, but I had a great construction team that helped me bring my vision into reality and tackle the ‘engineering’ challenges. 

The bars were designed to be washed up crates that we painted and covered in kelp to look like they’ve been at sea for some time. The plan was also to cover the ceiling in a bunch of clouds in which we used LED strips for lightning, and beads on fishing lines to look like rain.

And lastly, to cover up the big pillar holding up the boat, it was converted into an octopus tentacle. 

Working during the night of the event

During the night of the event, all members of the project are given a job. I was working in ‘service’ in my room, meaning I was collecting glassware and doing the dishes. I got to spot 2 Nobel Laureates during the night. It was truly amazing getting to see the room come to life, all the guests enjoying themselves …even though my back and legs were giving out.

If you want to see more photos from the event, checkout SNNC’s facebook page!

Saying goodbye to the project and the team 

The party ended at 5am, but we had to stay a bit longer to clean up and even start dismantling some of the decorations. This was quite hard to do considering the amount of time and effort I had put into the project. The next week we had deconstruction week, which was more laid back and an opportunity for everyone to relax. It was actually during deconstruction week that I got to know the people I’ve been working with better.

Would I do it again?

While it did get very stressful, and it was a lot of work, it was also a lot of fun. The atmosphere was inspiring and motivational: just imagine being in a big building filled with students working together to turn planks of wood into practically anything. And there’s more to the project than just the decor and construction part. Students dealt with sponsors, organizing entertainment, food and beverages, etc.

I think that surely, if I don’t commit to any other projects next year, I’ll be a committed member of SNNC again next year. Afterall, it’s not often you get to see a boat being sawn in half and carried into a room by a group of students.