Every year, the University Communications of UW-La Crosse plans a medallion hunt, which encourages students to follow clues posted on their website in order to find the hidden medallion somewhere on campus. Clues are released each day for a week in the hopes that one student will find it. This year, the prizes to reward the winner were a $50 gift card to the university book store and a lifetime membership to the UW-La Crosse Alumni association, which is a $400 value.
Through a mixture of attentiveness, diligence and a willingness to think outside of the box, junior Rachel Eigner found the medallion on Thursday, Oct. 16 in the bushes outside of Murphy Library.
Eigner, who participated in last year’s hunt as well, is from Menomonee Falls and is majoring in biology education with a minor in chemistry education and plans to become a high school teacher.
When asked why she went searching for the medallion this year, she explained that she’d learned about it her freshman year from an RA in her dorm who found it that year and was determined to engage in the hunt the following year. When the time came, she was on her way to where it was hidden when it was announced that it had been found near Reuter Hall.
This year, Eigner resolved to work even harder to find the coveted medallion. When asked how she handled the hunt this year, she responded that she was “on top of [her] game” this year and paid extra attention to the clues as they were released.
As she analyzed each clue, Eigner took it a step further and visited places like Special Collections in Murphy Library.
She realized that the clues offered great learning opportunity and said, “It was a really cool way to learn about the history of UW-L.”
Even as each day passed without any discovery of the medallion, Eigner refused to give up. She recounted, laughing, that each time she saw the flash of a discarded candy wrapper, she thought she’d found it.
Her determination paid off when, with only a half hour between class and her tutor volunteering, she began to search around the Hoeschler Clocktower, giving it one last effort for the day. Within five minutes of rifling through bushes between the tower and Murphy, she came upon the pin-sized medallion and immediately rushed to University Communications, claiming her prizes and title of winner for this year’s hunt.
Eigner, who is happy to finally have won what she’s worked for the past two years, offered some helpful advice to future medallion seekers, saying, “Keep up with the clues and think of different ways the clues can be interpreted.”
She also said not to be afraid of thinking what buildings or areas are near the earlier clues and search there, too, just in case, as well as making sure to get out early in the day to search.
When asked what she was going to do with the prizes, she was a little unsure and excited about her Alumni membership, but she stressed that she was going to save her gift card for now. If her careful planning has shown anything, it’s that her instincts are usually right and that saving will probably end with a great new prize, though maybe not as hard to find as the medallion.