Carefree Quirks Hold Key to Undergrad Success

I left Georgetown for the summer after my freshman year without feeling any sense of personal accomplishment or intellectual advancement. Essentially, my first year of college was an extension of high school, sans the good grades and nagging parents. In a situation that most college freshmen find themselves in, I was in social limbo, unattached to a particular group of friends. My academic focus was equivalently nebulous and my performance was lackluster. I ended my first year frustrated with Georgetown, the administration, my curriculum and myself. 

What I’m getting at, in writing this reflection, is how I went from a pretty miserable freshman to a reflective graduating senior, unable to imagine a college experience anywhere else but on the Hilltop. During the past few days of Senior Week, I’ve been able to think of a few key lessons I’ve learned here at Georgetown:

1. Find a good roommate. This can make a world of a difference, socially and mentally. Having someone to clean up your vomit is one thing; having someone to rationalize things when your world turns upside down is another. 

2. Make friends and keep them. These are the people with whom you jump into the fountain in Dahlgren Quad or lazily watch “Law and Order: SVU” marathons on Sunday afternoons, but also with whom you make life-changing decisions about your future and create memories that will last longer than your four years at Georgetown. Without my friends, I wouldn’t have made it to graduation; I thank God for them everyday.

3. Join (or create) a club or organization. The bonds you create with these like-minded students are friendships that are only enriched by the activities in which you participate, whether they are tutoring students in a D.C. public school, raising awareness of a culture or playing team flip cup. And you’ll probably get a free T-shirt.

4. Do everything at the last minute. Don’t waste your time studying for that orgo test three weeks before the actual exam or writing multiple drafts of a paper before submitting it. Procrastinate: Go to that party in Burleith, try out that restaurant in Dupont Circle, play Jenga in your backyard at 2 a.m. After you leave college, you’ll never be able to fudge your deadlines or have a 24-hour library to cram for a test with your classmates. There’s a reason why you’re here (well, at least, for most of you), and that’s because you’re smart. You can handle the pressure.

5. Lastly — and as cliché as this may sound — make every single moment count. As a note to the underclassmen, I urge you to enjoy college to its fullest. And this doesn’t mean you should get schwasty-faced every night. It means you should enjoy the freedom that you have as young adults to make friends with different types of people, learn from your experiences, grow intellectually and, somewhere in there, effect change.

While this list isn’t exhaustive, I think it’s as comprehensive as it can be within my word limit. If you’ve merely skipped to the end of my reflection to get the gist, take one thing away: If there’s anything I’ve learned from my time at Georgetown and from my amazing friends, it’s that you can never take yourself too seriously. In your short time at college, there’s only so much you can do, and the times that you will remember are the times when you had fun. So while you’re still at Georgetown, make sure to laugh here, laugh now and laugh often.

Thanks to Jon, Audrey, Asra, Krystle, Raymond, Lisa, MB, Polli, Jono, Caroline, Curley, Cathy, Alex, Club Filipino, GUMSHOE and all my other Georgetown senior and underclassman friends for laughing with me and, most of the time, at me.

Roland Dimaya is a senior in the School of Nursing and Health Studies, a co-founder of GUMSHOE (Georgetown University Math & Science Hands-On Enrichment) and a former senior adviser to Club Filipino.

To send a letter to the editor on a recent campus issue or Hoya story or a viewpoint on any topic, contact opinion@thehoya.com. Letters should not exceed 300 words, and viewpoints should be between 600 to 800 words.