A cool activity Upper School is trying this year is the Advisory World Cup. It is different from past advisory activities, and if everything goes well, the games may continue on to next year. 

The games are similar to the World Cup as teams compete against each other and do eliminations later on. There are four groups of advisories that will compete against each other, and the best team from those groups will face off against the best team of another group. Then, the two winning teams compete against each other. 

The advisories are nearing the end of the tournament, with only eight teams still in the game.

To prepare for the tournament, advisories were instructed to create a game that they would play against each other. A few games were the early rough Red Rover game that Dr. Ketchell’s advisory created, the intense game of Pictionary that many advisories utilize, and the iconic game of Mahjong of Mr. Payne’s advisory.

These advisory games have brought a sense of excitement as students revel in their wins or become determined to win the next game. It has already made advisories more fun and makes students want to go to their advisory. 

“My advisory [Dr. Markley’s advisory] does Pictionary. In one of the games, the last round was Barstow related, the topics were Knights, Mr. Fox, and Senior-Kindergarten buddies. It was intense, Jayden was the one to guess Senior-Kindergarten buddies which won us the game,” Alexandra Huynh ‘24 said excitedly. 

But there are still some complaints. The problems seem to stem from the fact advisory exists though, rather than the games themselves. 

“I have a problem with advisory just existing. If we were in middle or lower school, I could see the value of having it but not in high school. I enjoy advisory, but it’s a little juvenile, especially since it takes up our very few breaks,” Rothaas complained.

“I don’t think advisory is particularly necessary either but I can see why the school has it,” Dawood Qadeer ‘24 agreed.

So, maybe the Advisory Games are good for livening advisory and making it more fun. Perhaps students will view advisory as less of a chore if it has something fun that students created. 

The competition has gotten very serious and the stakes are high. May the best advisory win. However, Mr. Frank’s advisory is sure to take the W.