Five friends. One hundred adventures. Four years.
Starting before winter break, high school friends Patrick Hahn, Bryce Edwards, Joe Townsend and twins Faustina and Teresa Nguyen set out to complete the entire UNC Bucket List, which is a list of 100 things to experience at UNC, compiled by The Daily Tar Heel.
When the freshmen first arrived on campus, they found that they weren’t as involved as they might have hoped.
“The campus was one of the things that brought me here in the first place,” Townsend said.
“There’s so much to do here, and when you get here as freshmen, you don’t even know where to start.”
The list afforded a chance for the group to discover the perks and traditions of UNC that they wouldn’t have otherwise known about.
“There’s so much more to UNC than just studying, going to class and eating,” Faustina Nguyen said.
“A good half of the list is about eating, though,” Townsend added.
Apart from a frustrating experience with a Daily Tar Heel crossword (#25), the group has enjoyed the 11 items they’ve completed so far.
The group has discovered an affinity for Time Out’s chicken-cheddar biscuits (#7) and racquetball (#53) as a result of their efforts.
Even some of the more mundane items have been entertaining for the group.
Instead of simply checking out eight books from Davis (#73), each member had one minute to scramble around each floor in search of the best title, pulling some intriguing works like The Hippie Dictionary, Law and Sexuality in Canada, and Dismembering the Male.
The fruits of the list extended beyond UNC’s campus, as the list demands trips to Carrboro (#21, #31), Asheville (#69), Wilmington (#70), Raleigh (#77) and the North Carolina State fair (#54).
“It really is the Carolina experience, not just UNC,” Edwards said.
Townsend, an avid videographer, films each of the items.
Videos of six of the 11 items have been posted to the group’s YouTube page, projectbucketUNC. The videos can also be found on Facebook under Project Bucket UNC.
The introduction video currently has 230 views, and the others have averaged around 100 views each.
There is no firm long-term schedule to complete the list, but the group generally does weekly or bi-weekly challenges. To stay on pace to complete the list in four years, the group hopes to have around 25 items completed by the end of this school year.
Putting the videos on YouTube offered a way for the group to both document their experiences and provide fun ideas for anyone on campus.
“If people see us having fun, maybe it will inspire them to go and do it themselves,” Edwards said.
“It’s a guided way to be awesome.”
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