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

Administrators Turning On Lights Too Soon

BY ALL ACCOUNTS Administrators Turning On Lights Too Soon Last Call Came Too Quickly, But at Least We Got What We Wanted By Tim Haggerty

It’s the last round for University Registrar John Q. Pierce III and I in our epic bout over which courses I really want to take. I’ve trained years for this fight, and in this final round I’m prepared to bite any ears between my desired classes and myself.

I’ll put it another way, though if you, like me, (and chances are you don’t) regret that good movies are finite, then I think you know where I’m going, if you’re not there already.

We’re at the point in our college careers where the Christmas trees are out, but the holiday is still months away. We’re sort of happy that it’s coming but sort of sad that the sooner it comes, the sooner it’s gone. If you’re anything like me (and chances are you aren’t), you’re busy, you’re considering post-graduate enterprise and you know plenty of people too self-absorbed to listen.

Lucky for me, I know you. I know you’re eating a sloppy sandwich in New South or sitting with nothing better to do than read this prattle. You’ll listen, won’t you?

Read on, dear friend, but please know that I am flying on high-octane emotion. I may call on unorthodox spelling techniques and a vast internal catalogue of cliches to most efficiently suggest the frenetic machinery of my mind. I just want you to know how I feel (baby).

Maybe I’m just a little miffed that the university is already preparing to send me away; we had to “apply for graduation” before we pre-registered for our last semester of classes and I half-expect a pre-eviction notice to slide through the mail slot in the next few weeks.

I do sympathize with the organizational and bureaucratic necessities in granting thousands of college degrees that symbolize the impartation and reception of a certain level of higher education (and certify the bearer’s capacity for convoluted, if not impenetrable writing).

But not yet. I still have a midterm to hand in.

The root of the matter is this: Graduation preparation only reminds us that this great movie is coming to end, and premature preparation only informs us that this great movie is coming to a premature end.

Truth is, there’s still an awful lot I have to do before my time at Georgetown runs out and I’m forced to enter an unforgiving world with nothing but my wits, two pairs of cargo pants and three hooded sweatshirts.

I need to go back to the Air and Space Museum to watch the three-minute “Scott Hamilton Skates the Universe” video, wherein Eric Idle sings a ludicrous rhyme while Hamilton performs vigorously stylized maneuvers while avoiding meteors and juggling celestial objects.

I need to shave a creepy mustache over my lip and make my first Friday night trip to Champs.

I need to sample every vegetarian item on the Booeymonger menu.

So maybe I don’t have a lot that I need to do.

In my time here I’ve done almost exactly what I’ve wanted. I have trouble finding any fault with Georgetown because the place can be whatever you want it to be.

You can take classes that interest you or classes that you think will make you more marketable to employers. You can come to learn or you can come to get a job. You can go to the Newseum every weekend or you can go to Rhino every night.

Georgetown is something different for everyone.

Growing up, I was regaled with my parents’ Georgetown stories of the early `70s – I can’t look at Banks Street without imagining the time their friend turned off M Street on two wheels onto Banks, or how he had to ditch his car in an alley for weeks after a hit and run incident.

I’ve heard for years about the Grog & Tankard, the seedy dive on Wisconsin Avenue. It was my dad’s favorite place when he was here, and it’s where my roommate and good buddy performed with his guitar this weekend.

As I sat in the dim, smoky room decorated with neon signs and eclectic wall hangings (posters of New Zealand, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Michael Jordan, an olde cartographer’s interpretation of the earth, a buck head from the stone age and a monumental portrait of Albert Einstein) I couldn’t help but wonder how my dad could have actually liked the place. As he tells it, they used to serve greasy pizza too.

Maybe I do like the place, at least as an oddity, where there’s a pinball game called “The Shadow” in the back, Snoop Dogg posters over the urinals and extra billiards balls in a cigar box where a television ought to be. There’s a suspicious guy with a towel across his shoulders coaching women on billiards strategy and there’s a woman who I’m told is a performer at the gentlemen’s club next door.

Point is, my Georgetown experience won’t match my dad’s or my mom’s and it won’t match yours, either.

If I know you well enough, you’re at the end of your rope. You’re wondering why I think you care enough to follow the meandering path of my feeble mind. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t. I’ve only got a semester and a half before they spit me out of here and sell my room.

By All Accounts appears every Tuesday in The Hoya. The author can be reached at haggertythehoya.com.

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