Three Weeks into College
I arrived at George Washington University over three weeks ago with five suitcases and a lot of excitement for what Washington, D.C. has in store for me. And I’ve been so impressed and busy with everything that I almost forgot to turn in this column.
It feels like GW has everything.
Every day that I’m not in class or studying, I’m exploring the city with friends, locking in over 10,000 to 20,000 steps a day.
Like most colleges, GW has an Instagram page dedicated to making new friends, and I’ve found a lot of people from there that I’ve been hanging out with since I got to campus. I definitely love taking daily walks to the Washington Monument and meeting new friends on adventures.
Especially in the first couple of weeks, everyone is so friendly that it’s important to take advantage of all the events around us.
So with club recruitment also adding mandatory informational meetings/interviews and tryouts for club teams, I’m rarely in my dorm.
This weekend I went to the Georgetown flea market, went to two museums, took the Metro to Virginia, and hung out with my roommates and our friends in my dorm.
There’s always something to do.
One takeaway for me is not to get carried away. Being an International Affairs major at GW is a lot harder than I was anticipating.
There is a lot more reading than what I experienced in high school, and I’m doing everything I can not to get behind, even if that means missing a few social events.
For example, an average homework assignment from my Introduction to International Affairs class is to read 45 textbook pages, another 15-page article, and watch a one-hour video. This is just one class, and the deadline is always about two days.
Professors are also a lot less lenient than I was expecting. I was told to expect them to be harsh, but experiencing it in real life was shocking.
My favorite class so far is Persian. I am in a small class with a professor dedicated to helping us learn, and I have enjoyed being taught at her pace.
It also doesn’t feel real to look out the window in this class and see the Washington Monument.
As for my five other roommates and I, we were nervous about how big the space would be to accommodate all of us, but we were impressed.
We all have enough storage for our things and can walk around our suite pretty well. Our only problem is that when we all want to sit on the floor together, we have to try really hard to make space. That being the only complaint is really good, so we’re incredibly lucky for our space and friendships we’ve found with one another.
Even though my life was so different three weeks ago, in three more weeks my life will also look different as I dive further into what my campus has to offer.