Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

A Place Between Home and the Hilltop

Michelle+Xu
Michelle Xu
Michelle Xu
MICHELLE XU/THE HOYA

“There’s no place like home.” I always held this cliche in the highest regard, for the feeling of coming home should be unrivalled. Upon my return home for my first collegiate winter break, I had high expectations for the feeling of “homecoming.” Instead of feeling enveloped in a sense of warmth and belonging, disorientation and isolation overwhelmed me.

I experienced symptoms of culture shock in my living room, of all places, opening presents with my family on Christmas Eve. Waves of shame and guilt washed over me. How could I feel so out of place at home with my family, who have sacrificed endlessly to ensure that I could attend Georgetown? I found myself silently (or not so silently) correcting the often-terrifying grammar of my family’s Pittsburgh-ese and falling silent in conversations because I had nothing to contribute. Sure, I could comment on family developments and gossip, but I had the distinct feeling that I was an outsider, the “yuppie” just passing through.

It’s absolutely frightening to feel like a stranger in one’s own home. Upon coming to Georgetown, I was comfortable with my blue collar. I could identify with the bricklayer,the farmer and the housekeeper long before I could identify with the consultant or the lawyer. Now, my blue collar hangs in the back of my closet. When I pull it on, it feels like a costume, itchy and awkward, worn for the sake of my audience back home.Looking in the mirror, I ask myself what defines my place. Does my tax bracket act as the determining factor? Internship? Education level? Am I blue collar? Upper-middle class? Middle-lower? Drowning in the mess of labels and social stratifications, I find myself doing my family a great injustice: I am losing touch with my roots.

Although I have tried to deny it, the truth has reared its ugly head on more than one occasion. Each time, I panic at the realization, and the same question comes to the forefront of the internal power struggle between past and future. How do I simultaneously pay respect to my roots while reaching for a way of life that would, more or less, leave those roots behind?

This question undoubtedly faces many students whose time at Georgetown will result in a socioeconomic leap. Essentially, a Georgetown education serves as a key to a whole different world, one in which I still feel like a visitor. Even though I find myself uncomfortably donning my blue collar, I’m not quite at home in J. Crew or the power suit. I know what I looked like when I came to Georgetown, and I know how I’m supposed to look when I leave, but the process of reconciling those two roles — those two identities — has become painfully stressful.

I have no doubt that walking out the front gates with my degree in hand will make me feel inevitably more at home in the world for which Georgetown has prepared me. That’s not my concern. My fear lies with the seemingly unavoidable observation that, while achieving my degree and a new role in society, I will forget my roots. Not out of a lack of respect or lack of wanting, but simply as a result of circumstance.

Over the past few years, the promise of a better future has drowned out my fear, but it becomes much more difficult to ignore when I return to the town I have fallen into the habit of calling, “Podunk, Pennsylvania.” In a consciouseffort to “rediscover” my roots, I indulge in activities that I once considered “chores,” but now consider “novelties.” For example, I always carve out time to spend on my grandfather’s cattle farm, pitchfork in hand.

My family’s iconic patriarch, at the sprightly age of 82, has come to represent everything I feel I’m losing, and he is the one person I find myself most terrified of disappointing. While at home, I visit him last before I head back to school, and each time he sends me off with the same departing words: “Don’t ever forget your humble beginnings as a dirt farmer.”

Regardless of my GPA or any job prospect, my stomach rolls with the sick feeling that I am failing him and that, on some fundamental level, I am also failing myself. But maybe, just maybe, I can find a way to do both, to wear my blue-collared shirt underneath my power suit. I’d rather be slightly uncomfortable than continue to push my family, my roots and my humble beginnings to the back of the closet.

Josi Sinagoga is a junior in the School of Foreign Service.

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