I have always been a busy bee who loves making a difference by contributing to my community. So, when I arrived at Georgetown four years ago, I dove head-first into all the activities Georgetown had to offer. I remember multiple 7 a.m. mornings spent flyering for STAND, innumerable princess-themed door decorations for my floor of Harbin-ites, non-specific all-nighters in Healy and a jumble of late-night Dahlgren fountain dives. But, maybe rather surprisingly, not much else. My first three years at Georgetown were a haze of doing.
My blur of blue and gray, however, was thrown into sharp relief this year.
It was a normal Tuesday night in September. My best friend David had to move from Henle to Village A, and I had offered to help. While I packed and hauled boxes, he sat in his bed. I chastised him for getting me to do all the work, again. David, however, wasn’t being lazy. By Thursday he was in the emergency room. A whirl of perplexed doctors later, he was home for the rest of the semester.
David was soon diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. CFS is a debilitating disorder characterized by persistent exhaustion, achiness and insomnia. The illness’ cause is not definitively known and there is no treatment beyond rest, a healthy lifestyle and waiting it out. David would not be coming back to Georgetown for the spring semester of my senior year.
Just like that, I had lost the opportunity to spend my last few months at Georgetown with my best friend. Just like that, my best friend found himself missing his junior year.
David’s CFS has taught me many lessons. Health is fleeting and can be taken away in an instant; the true tests of friendship are being there for IV’s and nights too miserable to go out, not shotgunned beers and dips in the fountain; and you really should eat five servings of fruit and vegetables per day.
Returning to campus in January, I asked myself if I had really taken the time to appreciate my friendship with David or any of my other friendships for that matter. What if my Georgetown experience had been limited like his? Had I ever taken the time to bask in the amazing opportunities I had been given here? I didn’t think I had.
After this wake-up call, I made an effort to climb off the metaphoric hamster wheel this semester. My penchant for “doing” was definitely at the forefront of my motivations for signing up for 99 Days at The Tombs. There’s a plaque involved and it is a venerable Georgetown tradition, so how could I pass up the opportunity? However, rather than running in solo for a quick soda whenever it was most convenient for me, I met friends at The Tombs bar almost every day. As we pushed the limits of what on the Study Snacks menu was appropriate to slather in spicy ranch sauce, we chatted and reflected on how our days were going, becoming closer as a group. While this example seems trivial, taking the time to actually appreciate the experience and the meaning behind it made 99 Days so much more valuable to me.
Looking back, I would not trade my activities, formal and informal, at Georgetown for anything. However, I wish I had realized at the time what exactly I was doing. I wasn’t flyering Georgetown’s campus in record time — I was participating in the global movement to stop genocide. I wasn’t cutting out paper crowns — I was making sure that 54 freshman girls on Harbin 6 came to call Georgetown home. I wasn’t writing another tedious ten-page paper — I was enriching my knowledge of the world around me. I wasn’t jumping in the Dahlgren fountain to tick something off a bucket list — I was making memories with friends, like David, who I will cherish for a lifetime.
Bridget O’Loughlin is a senior in the School of Foreign Service, the former president of STAND and a Fulbright Scholar.
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