By: Jeremy Blye

Throughout the past couple of weeks, we have been able to knock out photo days, DeSmash Tournaments, Jerm on the Street filming, and just interacting with the community. It has been quite fun having everything back in person and putting names to people’s faces. One thing I want to mention is an interesting experience I have had in recent days. I fully understand the pain of trying to learn everyone’s name in an organization/team/classroom setting.

When I was younger, I never put too much thought into the amount of work leaders/teachers have to put in to be able to know everyone who they deal with. As I have gotten more and more involved with the Esports program, I am slowly starting to see just how difficult it can be to learn everyone who is in this community. I mean there are just about 1300 students and alumni that exist with us, so you can imagine how many people I can see on a daily basis.

During the first photo day, I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of new faces I was seeing. I got to a point where I was sometimes unable to realize someone that came in was someone I already knew. For example, Joey from the Rocket League team came in to get his pictures taken, and I had no clue that it was him who was in front of me. It was extremely weird to not even be able to recognize some of my friends due to the sheer number people I was meeting.

After the first couple of photo days and many days working as an employee, I think the coolest revelation I have had is my knowledge of names and faces. It is so cool to be able to know and recognize the many different faces that make up DePaul Esports. I know at this point you are all probably wondering why I am even talking about this subject. I just want you to think about this next point.

I may think it is fantastic that I am able to recognize the many faces of DePaul Esports. You may think that as well. In the grand scheme of things, I’m starting to realize how many people DePaul Esports affects. DePaul is a big school to begin with. We have over 23,000 students. The fact that our organization is over 1300 people is stunning. Within just a few weeks, I have been able to become introduced to virtually our whole competitive group(s) of gamers. I’m at a point where I can truly recognize and establish relationships with most of them. Considering we keep having a big influx of gamers every week, I am even more excited to see the amount of people that join our program. It is awesome to be able to see these types of things happening in my time here at DePaul. It only helps further my passion to be a part of this program and help it succeed each and every day. Each day, I hope I can continue to help out with this program, but until then, I’m here for the ride!