SENIOR VIEWPOINT Four Years of Change, but Looking Back Will Be Easy By Stephen Owens

Charles Nailen/The Hoya Despite a different path in college, Stephen Owens is still on top of the world.

Over the past several weeks, more than a few of my colleagues here at The Hoya have confronted me with the question, “What are you going to write your senior viewpoint about?” and I have always responded with the same nonchalant, “I haven’t decided yet.” Many of them have expressed frustration and helplessness at the daunting prospect of having to summarize their college experiences in 800 words. I do not share their sentiments. This is going to be easy.

Lest I be dishonest, I’ll tell you up front that I still don’t know which words are to follow these, so I’ll simply rely on the same tactic that I’ve relied on so many times over the past four years when writing for The Hoya: I’m just going to sit down and write.

Nearly four years ago in the spring of 1998, I awaited graduation from The Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Conn., with the same fervor I do today, the spring of 2002. For better or for worse, however, the similarities between these two momentous occasions begin and end there. Over Easter break, my impending graduation prompted me to bring the video of my high school graduation back to Georgetown with me. I would have had little interest in the video – filled with long-winded speeches and the presentations of long-forgotten awards, not to mention the ungodly process of 211 graduates receiving their diplomas one by stinking one – were it not for my role in the ceremony as class speaker.

Over the past month since returning from Easter Break, I’ve watched that video several times – to the point where my housemates cover their ears and shout obscenities in my general direction – and the more I watch it, the more I realize how different I am from the man in the television set. He wasn’t an ounce over 145 pounds, was a member of the Cum Laude Society from a New England prep school and was one of New England’s most accomplished swimmers and water polo players. And there I sat on my couch, beer in hand no doubt, noting the differences between myself – a 190-pound mediocre student who had quit the Georgetown swim team three and a half years earlier – and this now foreign-to-me man. Instead of winning races and giving prestigious speeches I’ve been lighting rugs on fire and swimming across smutty rivers in the middle of March.

My, how the mighty have fallen!

I don’t buy it though. I haven’t fallen anywhere. What I’ve done throughout the majority of my time spent here at Georgetown, save these last few months, is channel what I’ve had to offer this university into neither a classroom nor a swimming pool, but into a filthy office on the fourth floor of the Leavey Center – first as a sports writer, then as a member of an utterly incompetent editorial board, then as a Webmaster, then as a humor columnist and yes, finally, as a disruptive nuisance.

And so it’s been in this office where I’ve spent my days and (more often) nights, writing over 120 articles, editorials and columns, uploading about 50 editions of the newspaper on the Web site and wasting exorbitant amounts of time with friends who have fallen prey to this same addiction that is The Hoya. So it is understandable if not mandatory that the memories I take with me from Georgetown are rooted in this institution.

So you see, I’m not the same man I was four years ago . God knows I’m not even close. But if four years from now, I’m the same man I am today, I’ll consider myself lucky. This is going to be easy.

Stephen Owens is a senior in the College and a former senior Web editor, sports editor, contributing editor, columnist and member of The Hoya’s Editorial Board.