University of New Brunswick student Sue Tran created a Facebook event called “Crying at the SUB Because of Exam Stress.” What started off as a joke between friends culminated in over 1,100 people responding with interest on Facebook, and an actual event.
The gathering, which Tran said was inspired by another event on Facebook that took place in Melbourne, Australia called “Crying on Flinders Street Because No One Loves You,” was originally shared to fewer than ten people. Now, Tran’s Crying at the SUB event has gathered more responses than the UNB Student Union’s entire De-Stress Fest week.
“It just caught on. I thought it would provide a few laughs… but never to the scale that it did,” Tran said. “I am somehow both immensely thankful and mildly terrified about the responses.”
Though Tran was not originally planning to host an actual in-person event, she fully embraced the task, even putting out a call for volunteers. Hosted on Friday, April 12, the event was exactly as advertised on the poster (which features Kermit the Frog crying while clutching a box of tissues): a space for students to vent about exam stress, whether that includes crying or not.
Tran said around 40 to 50 students attended the event, which sparked some interesting conversations about exam stress.
As Crying at the SUB began as a joke, it has a natural penchant for humour. The event itself made reference to several popular memes, including Kermit the Frog and the ever-popular idiom, “crying in the club.”
Some students have been adding new memes to the event’s Facebook page, building off the concepts of crying, exams and the general struggles of student life. This has created a humorous and light-hearted dialogue surrounding the event.
“I think life is stressful in general, but everything just gets intensified during exam season,” Tran said.