I have a desk in The Hoya office; in the top-left corner, there is a picture of Blackfoot 1-1, my squad from my 2008 deployment to Afghanistan. I bill that picture as my “roots” because in those eight months in Helmand Province, Southern Afghanistan, I changed from who I was to who I am. When that picture isn’t on my desk, it’s in my phone or in my wallet. I look at it frequently on production nights at The Hoya because, although I’m 10 years senior to most of the people who work in the office, working for our campus newspaper is an entirely new experience — an experience that is shaping me in ways that my time in the Marines did not.
Like my squad from Afghanistan, the editors at The Hoya are cohesive. Sitting there at my desk, I’m allowed a privileged glimpse at those who spend so much of their time publishing and writing for a newspaper they truly love. On Monday and Thursday nights, as I observe writers and editors juggle an extensive academic workload and a commitment to The Hoya, I admire the palpable dedication of my peers. If this newspaper represents a microcosm of the student body as a whole, then it has truly forced me to appreciate the caliber of students at Georgetown.
When I first arrived on the Hilltop in the summer of 2011, I was a stranger in a strange land. Fellow 23-year-olds were hard to come by, and I feared that I would spend most of my time at Georgetown as an outsider looking in. Never have I been so wrong. I left the Marines because I wanted the coveted four-year college experience, and I can safely say that my time at The Hoya has made that decision everything I wanted it to be. The Hoya newsroom is where I discovered my passion for journalism and for Georgetown. I left one unit and joined another. I joined a unit that carries notepads instead of rifles, and I can say with absolute honesty that this has been one of the best decisions I have ever made.
TM Gibbons-Neff is The Hoya’s executive editor and a junior in the College. Leavey 421 is a weekly catalog of goings-on in The Hoya’s office.
