On a well-constructed staircase, each step is precisely the same height. The idea is that your brain will remember how high you had to lift your foot to get up the first one. It takes a single split-second lesson to train your feet to climb an entire flight of stairs, without thought. That’s how the best craftsmen do it.

That is not how Georgetown does it.

Move-in day, 2001. A freshman brimming with the blissful confidence that comes with a new beginning, I set off from Village C, ready to explore the campus that would mould me into the brilliant, charming, successful woman I was destined to become. Up the stairs I skipped .

And promptly fell flat on my face.

It wasn’t just a stumble. It was a full-out, face-first, skinned-palms digger, flip-flops in all directions and the contents of my purse splayed across the sidewalk like roadkill.

Parents stared. Students laughed. I wondered how fast I could transfer.

Georgetown was supposed to be my Perfect School, and I had found a flaw in less than an hour. You see, the stairs next to the Village C ramp do not follow the rules of proper construction. Each one is of varying height – an inch difference, maybe less, but enough to threaten the unsuspecting. You can’t just skip up them without paying attention. You have to notice each step. But like most freshmen, I was too ready to see what was at the top to worry about the stairs themselves.

I was still in a hurry when I took the last GUTS bus home from work junior year and jumped out on M Street on a frosty February night. The Exorcist stairs became a scene of unmitigated terror when I realized, too late in my haste, that the entire flight was slick with inch-thick ice. I was trapped halfway up. In the dark. In two-inch heels. To keep climbing or to slide back to the bottom? In my mind’s eye, I saw the headline in the next issue of THE HOYA: “Idiot Girl Killed in Fall – What The Hell Was She Thinking?” At least I’d get to be part of a story and not just a byline.

After half an hour of sliding and slipping and praying for dear life, I swallowed my pride and crawled up the last quarter on my hands and knees. Somewhat humiliated, but still alive, I kissed the ground and stumbled across the street to recount my tale of reckless adventure over a pitcher at The Tombs. It made for a pretty good story. Once you get to the top, the climb never seems as hard as it really was.

Step up, step together, repeat. It should be easy. Stairs, after all, are a straight path up, and you take them one at a time. So far, life has been tinged with perpetual anticipation of The Next Step. Do well in high school so you can get into a good college, so you can get a good internship, so you can get into a good grad school, so you can get a good job, so you can .?

The problem is, no one ever tells you what comes after that ellipsis.

For all my worrying and planning and hurrying, I finally realized it should have been step up, step together, turn around and enjoy the view from your climb. I’ve been mistaken all along. These stairs, these challenges, they aren’t supposed to be a mindless path. Every step isn’t supposed to be perfectly measured, it has to be consciously taken. You’ve got to watch where you’re climbing so that you know where you’re going.

Georgetown didn’t make the stairs nice and even. It taught me how strong I was. It showed me how weak. Like the stairs outside Village C, some are shorter than they should be and some are taller than you expect. Sometimes you fall down a few and have to pick yourself back up and try again. Sometimes you can take them two at a time, and sometimes they bring you to your knees. Because while the Hilltop will inspire you and befriend you and teach you and coddle you, it will also, sometimes, trip you up – just to see if you’re really paying attention.

Georgetown was a lesson I had to learn, a staircase I had to climb. A really beautiful, rewarding, ridiculous, incredible staircase. And I’m finally learning to watch my step.

Amanda McGrath is a senior in the School of Foreign Service. She is a former senior news editor, editor in chief, contributing editor and member of THE HOYA’s editorial board and board of directors.