Sarah Walsh was always in charge.
Every few weeks, in a panic-stricken moment, I break into a cold sweat and contemplate what my life would have been like if I hadn’t left The College of William & Mary. I shudder as I imagine spending four years of my life amid Thomas Jefferson impersonators and candlemakers, then say a brief prayer of thanks that my college career turned out the way it did.
I went about the college application process much the same way I am currently going about searching for a job – completely haphazardly. Somehow I ended up at William & Mary in rural Williamsburg, Va., not really a choice location for a girl used to the bustle of Chicago. So after a year spent crying on the phone to my parents and wishing I were anywhere but Williamsburg, I made the best decision of my life.
I transferred to Georgetown.
In my first few weeks on the Hilltop I was riding an emotional roller coaster – it took me days to find the New South cafeteria because I was too embarrassed to admit I had no idea where it was. After a while, though, I settled into life at Georgetown, mainly because I became involved in The Hoya.
I have no idea why I joined The Hoya. It was one of my first days on campus and in my bewildered, NSO-saturated state I somehow wandered into The Hoya office.
Little did I know what was in store for me.
I didn’t know then that The Hoya office would become more of a home to me than any dorm room or townhouse. I didn’t know then that the weird newspaper people who I met there would become some of my best friends (or that I would one day be one of those weird newspaper people). The first day I signed on to write for The Hoya I did not know it would have such a dramatic impact on my life.
The Hoya has been the best part of my life at Georgetown, but it all happened so gradually that I was completely sucked in before I knew it.
After spending my first semester covering sports I knew nothing about – field hockey, crew, sailing – I was perfectly content to stay on the same path, writing a couple of articles a week but never committing more until one fateful Block Party in fall 1998. Wandering around 37th Street in a beer-induced stupor, I ran into then-Sports Editor Karen Travers. She was considering running for the editor in chief position of The Hoya. Would I be interested in taking over her job? It seemed like a good idea at the time and before I knew it, I exchanged Thursday nights at Chadwicks for Thursday nights in Leavey 421.
I spent my first two semesters at The Hoya goofing off in the back room with then-Senior Sports Editor Sean P. Flynn. We specialized in making irreverent comments, pushing the journalistic envelope, turning on obnoxious music and generally causing a ruckus.
I never intended to go any further than an assistant editor position – everything else involved too much responsibility. Besides, I reasoned, I had a life outside The Hoya. The last thing I wanted to do was chain myself to a messy, smelly, stuffy office four nights a week for a job that frustrated me almost as much as it fulfilled me.
Now two whirlwind years later, after spending one semester as the senior sports editor and another as the editor in chief, I can’t imagine life without The Hoya. I can’t imagine who I would be without The Hoya.
I have never met a group of people so dedicated, or a group so little appreciated as The Hoya staff. Night after night, while other Georgetown students are heading for parties and bars, The Hoya staff is writing, editing, photographing, designing, developing, proofreading. They spend countless hours creating a newspaper as a labor of love (no matter how much we may complain or say we hate it).
So many of my best college memories were made with my Hoya friends: snowball fights on the Esplanade, roadtrips all over the U.S., Supreme Court demonstrations, 4 a.m. trips to IHOP, walks to the White House, champagne nights, IMF protests, galas and semi-galas, knock-out games, sing-alongs and all the other unforgettable moments.
I am graduating in three weeks and I don’t have a job. To be more precise, I don’t even know how to start looking for a job. I know I will be lucky to find a career as rewarding as my life at this newspaper.
Sarah Walsh is a former editor in chief, senior sports editor and sports editor of The Hoya.
