Hoya Staff Writer Friday, May 19, 2006 Lindsay Anderson/The Hoya Annie O’Brien

As Annie O’Brien (COL ’06) prepares to emerge from the gates of Georgetown, the most visible thing she leaves behind is something most Hoyas experience upon their very first arrival on the Hilltop: Balloons. Those blue and grey balloons spread across Key Bridge and beyond. For incoming freshmen, they’re a source of welcome, school pride and then some – “It gives you chills,” O’Brien says of the balloons that greet students as they arrive on campus. O’Brien’s legacy is more than balloons, an offbeat legacy for sure yet consistent with her character. As she leaves Georgetown, her current career ambition, unusual even for a devotee to the international health field, is to become a midwife. Chances are that her time spent working in Africa has influenced that choice. O’Brien spent the spring semester of her junior year volunteering at an orphanage outside of Cape Town, South Africa and the ensuing summer at the Village of Hope AIDS orphanage in Tanzania. “I think [those months] really helped me reevaluate my position in the world [and] the privileges in my life that I benefit from every day,” she says. “It’s helped me to be aware of . the need to continue to pursue work that minimizes, but hopefully erases, those privileges based on class, gender, race.” The Cape Town facility was started by one woman, “Rosie,” upon whose doorstep police would deliver abandoned children. Today, despite burgeoning international aid, O’Brien describes a place in need of all the help it can get – including her own. “As volunteers we were just thrown in, and you would do anything possible to give the caregivers a break – constantly changing diapers if they had diapers that day, looking after the kids, playing with the kids, giving them attention,” she says. “We spent a week in a hospital taking care of a victim of dehydration. I got an interesting view of public health in South Africa.” Things were different in Tanzania, where the AIDS orphanage was well-funded and well-organized. O’Brien chalks it up to the aid from abroad and as she descends from the ivory tower, she wants to do all she can to make sure it keeps coming. “Health issues, development, justice, human rights, anything,” she says of her post-graduation career plans. “I would love to go back to Africa; I’ve kind of been sold on it. I would go anywhere [in Africa].” At Georgetown, she has majored in sociology with a concentration in social justice. Her leading interest is the AIDS crisis in Africa and she claims no qualms about living or working on the continent as an adult. For O’Brien, spirit is undoubtedly her prevailing characteristic when it comes to making big decisions. And it has been the key characteristic of her four years at Georgetown, too. She found her place in NSO – orientation adviser as a sophomore, captain as a junior and senior – thanks to “the excitement that I could see in people when I had done it as a freshman,” she says. O’Brien loves being an NSO captain. Her primary responsibilities are to train her six orientation advisers and help coordinators plan the orientation-week activities, and the work lasts from dawn to dusk. “Your days are full and you’re busy trying to prepare things for new students, stuffing folders and making signs,” she says. There’s also the citywide scavenger hunt aimed at building camaraderie among NSO leaders, not to mention the early-morning trips to decorate Key Bridge with the balloons. “I’m all about the 5 a.m. balloons,” she says. O’Brien has also tried to infuse some campus spirit into what she has dubbed “Physical-Activity Tuesday,” a study break each Tuesday night during which students meet at the John Carroll statue and play sports and games for a half-hour. Events have ranged from soccer to dodgeball to capture-the-flag and while the contingent attending this year consisted mainly of NSO participants, the tradition is open to the public and will continue next year. It’s things like Physical-Activity Tuesday that O’Brien will miss most about Georgetown, moments that promote “the feeling of being invincible, that I can change the world, I can save the world,” she says. “Going out into the cold real world, life is real, and you don’t have the comforts or the protection of life here as a student.” As O’Brien makes the transition from Hilltop invincibility to the reality of international health, maybe a little bit of that “5 a.m. balloon” spirit will help her along the way.