As the winter shows signs of wrapping up, we can expect warmer weather, greener trees, and some general spring fun. One thing you can also expect is the annual march of students who are finishing up their study programs. That’s why we began to plan for our boss’ kid’s graduation party in the coming month. 

Our boss has always celebrated not only our own special occasions but the special occasions of our loved ones as well, so it felt only right that we invested time and effort into celebrating the coming graduation of his daughter, April. But then came the challenge of figuring out what kind of gifts for college students really worked for her. We knew our boss well enough to know what he liked, but we only knew that April was finishing up pre-med at the University of Toronto. So whatever we got her, it had to be good and relevant enough for a modern college student.

So we worked hard on trying to figure out the ideal college swag at this point in their lives. But attempting to untangle the complicated trends and interests of the modern-day teenager was proving to be more difficult than most of the actual work we had to do in the office. But our team was determined to solve this conundrum of finding a useful gift for students as a token of appreciation for our boss. So we decided to tackle it the way we knew how: brainstorming. 

Our team has always had the challenge of coming up with new ideas on the spot, so we were pretty confident in our ability to brainstorm an idea for a gift. We had our own techniques, called 100mph Thinking, which we adopted from a pretty good workshop that was run on the topic about a year ago. The requirements were simple: we just needed to set up a Google Sheet for us to start throwing ideas at. But we needed prompts, so we decided to look towards our company’s SwagMagic Shop, where we would routinely scour to figure out good gifts for our clients and even each other. 

Sure, we could just pick any random gift from the shop, but we wanted to make this one particularly special for April especially as it would be our boss’ first kid to graduate college. So the effort was on and we decided to meet at least twice a week to figure this out.

There was, however, a small hiccup that we had not anticipated to occur over the course of our planning project: April finding out. Yes, we hadn’t initially anticipated that she would catch on to the company trying something, but she’s always been astute to see whatever the office was up to. Last year, when we were planning birthday gifts for students of our operational staff, she quickly lent a hand to give some good insights on what kind of gifts these kids would appreciate. Back then, we worked out a cool SnackMagic curated snack box for these students to give something sweet and different. 

April was no elementary school kid, and she was proving to be a pretty capable young adult. While we were working on planning out a gift for her, she began hatching a scheme to influence our brainstorming in a way that truly surprised us. 

See, April and her dad, our boss, were close as can be. So whenever there were small administrative tasks that he needed to take care of, April would help out and manage them on his behalf. As a team, we were not surprised by this at all and often worked with April on small office tasks. What this meant, however, was that she also had access to the Google sheet we were planning our gifts on. We hadn’t realized, and we would soon see how this would unfold on her behalf as the weeks rolled by. 

Our Google Sheets was set up in a way that you can easily input an idea as part of our brainstorming exercise and subsequently vote on it to see if any particular idea makes it to the primary gift idea. We did the same when we were looking at inexpensive gifts for students from teachers we had recently worked with to create a simple curated box of giveaways for their kids. While it was hard to think about the best gift for students from a teacher, thinking of smaller gifts for students from teachers proved to be an easier task as each small gift had a higher probability of making different types of kids happy rather than betting on just one big gift. 

We were trying to do the same with April at this point, curating a list of different doodads that she might find useful. But as we were going through our brainstorming process, we were getting stuck trying to figure out where to begin. Then suddenly, we had one gift idea pop-up that had a high enough amount of votes. So we decided to go with that prompt and get her that gift. Then we saw another idea with a similar amount of votes come through. We were in a position where any idea that proved good enough was going to be it as her graduation party was coming soon.

Alongside this, we were also prepping the party itself. We knew how to throw a party with some pretty fun snacks, especially since we planned that holiday party for another school that was looking to have Christmas gifts for students from teachers. They even went as far as planning personalized gifts for students from their teachers as a gesture of thanks for completing a good year. With that in mind, we had to ensure that April’s graduation party was done in the very same spirit: complete with snacks, fun activities, and a personalized flair that made it her true graduation send-off (especially as she gears up for medical school). 

Unlike planning those goodbye gifts for students from teachers or even just planning small gifts for students from teachers, this little project of ours had a double agent. While we were prepping and waiting until the party proper, April had been setting up the pieces in order to pull off her little prank. 

We had been so preoccupied with both the gift planning and the party planning that whatever became the best-voted items on our Google Sheet we simply ended up getting and putting in one of our Swag Lockers for safekeeping. The collection of items was proving to be a little eccentric, but we knew nothing of what kids liked these days and just went with it. 

So when the day arrived at her party, we all celebrated and gave our best wishes to April as she went on to the next stage in her life. When we got to the graduation gift-giving, however, everyone in the room was confused; except April, of course. Inside our curated box were several t-shirts with random letters, some personalized insulated bottles, notebooks, and bags. 

What we hadn’t realized was that April, in all her smartness, had influenced the curated gift box as a gift for us instead of a gift for her. The t-shirts spelled out “THANK YOU”, and each bottle, notebook, and bag was designed with a message to each of our team members. Needless to say, we were touched beyond belief and felt a little silly we didn’t see it coming. Only the daughter of the most thoughtful boss would find a way to make her own graduation party about others. It’s going to be tough to top this once she graduates from medical school!