Dear Georgetown Class of 2018,

Nearly six months ago, I wrote a column for The Hoya voicing some very real concerns about my abilities as an OA for New Student Orientation 2014. Go read it if you like. I find it pretty funny, after all this time.

It is 12:47 a.m. I have just returned from working a Sunday Night Programming shift out in Healy Circle, and faced with one of the only quiet moments I have had in over a week, I began thinking about the events that have transpired since I moved back onto this campus August 18th, attended several days of training, and met my ten freshmen for the first time.

I had been so afraid, throughout the summer, during training, that I’d be coming back here and finding that nothing had changed about me. I worried that the slightly insecure, still very inexperienced freshman OA recruit who had first written “The Truth About The Hoya Saxa Moment”in April was still here. It had all seemed to go so fast, as if listening to a few lectures, jotting down some choice campus service phone numbers and memorizing the rules to a handful of icebreaker exercises somehow prepared me to facilitate full-on discussions with ten strangers over a boxed dinner after Welcome Session.

By August 23, I was a “trained OA,” even though I didn’t feel very much like one. I was terrified about finding myself among a group of anxious freshman and expected to perform well or risk crippling would-be friendships among my students.

I didn’t get it, what I was supposed to mean to these kids, what being an OA was about. Yes, we’re here to guide freshmen around campus, play a few games, shuttle them back and forth between dinners, workshops, performances, and nightly programming, and force a few otherwise unresponsive high school graduates into talking to one another. But there was something else, I knew it. But I was as far from the exact truth as I could possibly be.

I kept this all in my mind, as the music blared, the doors to McDonough finally opened on the first day of NSO, and I found myself face to face with ten new faces, all uncomfortable, nervous, and confused about why everyone around them was screaming.

But when their faces fell on me, a strange thing happened. On each one, I saw the slightest little smile, a kind of timid bemusement at the unfathomable dance moves I was pulling out standing on top of my chair and waving my poster like an idiot. For a brief second, I think they forgot about finding themselves in an alien place without their family and friends. For a brief second, I lifted that burden from them, that anxiety, that worry for their futures in this strange place.

I understood, in that moment, what OAs were meant to be. Or at least, the kind of OA I wanted to be. 

To our freshmen, we are lightning rods, loud, percussive, excitable beings that absorb the tension and the discomfort and give those nervous first-day jitters a rest, even if only for a brief moment. We take our kids’ minds off the obvious worries, and exchange them for a bit of fun at our own gladly given expense.

I will never know the exact impact I have had on my ten freshmen, as they are still currently far too reserved (as they probably should be) to talk about their feelings in true Georgetown fashion, but I want them to know the impact they have all had on me. Every time I felt unsure of myself, of my abilities to nurture a cohesive group dynamic, I would look at them, sitting in front of me, and remind myself that I was one of the only familiar faces they knew in this blue and gray crowd.

So I forced myself to be outgoing and crazy enough for the eleven of us. I danced, I shouted, I sent reminder after reminder about breakfast in the mornings and pressed the importance of the non-mandatory events in the hopes that at least some of them would come out for a good time. I did it for them, because they are my freshmen, and I am their OA. It was, after all, what I signed up for in the first place, and ultimately what has changed me beyond words.

I wonder if Rupert, Ben, Eddie, Lu, Sarah, Jordan, Tithi, Sebastian, Helena, or Jeff will ever read this. Personally, it’s my hope I’ll have at least a little bit of peace before they all round on me for putting their names in print. 

If you guys do read this, though, you should know one thing. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into at first, applying for NSO and going through training, but I get it now. You guys have given me the privilege of your company over the past few days, and I will never forget it.

I am both a teenager and the youngest in my family. I have never been responsible for another person in my entire life. I admit, I started a little rough this week, but you made me better. I showed you a few campus landmarks and how to make Chik-Fil-A sauce at the Leo’s condiment bar. But you showed me far more; you showed me a little bit more of who I am meant to be, a person that I have tried for much of my life to understand and be comfortable with. 

The NSO coordinators will tell you that I am a resource for your benefit. OAs are there for their freshmen. But in a way, I guess some freshmen are there for their OAs as well.

Thank you, for that. You’ve taught me more than you’ll ever know.

Yours,

Jinwoo Chong (COL ‘17)
Orientation Advisor