Keyboards clack away, excited chatter spreads throughout the room, and laughter accompanies video game soundtracks — this is the Computer Club.
Palatine High School’s Computer Club is starting up again this year, and students are excited to join one of the school’s most popular clubs.
“I joined Computer Club because I really like working with computers,” PHS senior Levi Cercas said. “That’s exactly what we do there, working with computers hardware”.
Cercas, a member for all four years, mentions how students get to tinker with a computer’s hardware and software in the club, working on their own projects or just experimenting with friends. The club is meant to encourage members to learn more about technology and to find out if they are interested in a career related to it, such as software engineering, or cybersecurity.
On top of the normal get-togethers, the club occasionally also hosts special events for the members.
“My favorite moment with Computer Club is the holiday parties we have in December, specifically the one we did last year,” Cercas said. “We had so much fun and people brought their towers and consoles that we all played together on”.
The club has also, for the first time, started up its own Minecraft server. Students can join and log in to it whenever they want, and play alongside their friends. The best part of the Computer Club which everyone agrees on is how it lets students come together. That was how the club first came to be, with students regretting that they couldn’t work on their passions side by side to help out their peers.
“The issue was that we couldn’t get together,” Computer Club sponsor James Schager said. “So we brought all our own computers and consoles in on a Saturday to work together”.
What started out as coming into the game together on their own computers, evolved into students collaborating on coding projects and upgrading their PCs.
Usually, when dealing with technology, people work on their tasks individually, but here members can work alongside one another. The club proves to be one of the most popular each year, and will seem to continue the trend this year. Whether it be coding, building, or gaming, the Computer Club is welcome to all members interested in having fun with others.
Students interested in joining the Computer Club should reach out to James Schager, with meetings being every Wednesday in room 142.
