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Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Student Movement Promotes Self-Reflection

DANIEL SMITH/THE HOYA Oliver Friedfeld (COL ’15) is the founder of the Treehouse Project, which seeks to broaden student's perspectives about college life.
DANIEL SMITH/THE HOYA
Oliver Friedfeld (COL ’15) is the founder of the Treehouse Project, which seeks to broaden student’s perspectives about college life.

As founder of the Treehouse Project, Oliver Friedfeld (COL ’15) is trying to help students at Georgetown understand that professional, teleological and educational concerns must still be in balance with development of self. Leading the charge for students’ self-reflection, Friedfeld discusses his countercultural movement.

So why is it called the Treehouse project?

Number one is that there is something that kids have right that is lost as we grow up. If you think about a kid, they are imaginative, creative, playful, curious about all kinds of stuff; they are excitable and most importantly they spend a lot of time doing what they want to do as opposed to what they “should” do. Part of it is eliciting some of that emotional response.

The second part is treehouse in particular. The treehouse serves as the symbol of the place where kids come together and dream. They play with ideas they talk to each other and they imagine about what the world could be and what life could be.

Why was it necessary to found the Treehouse Project?

When I came to Georgetown one of the things I was looking forward to was that everyone came with aspirations and these bold dreams of what they wanted to do whether it was an activist, filmmaker, athlete, writer, traveller, adventurer or all these kinds of things, but what happens over your time here is that people are channeled into certain paths and not encouraged to explore those dreams and passions.

Instead they are told, you should consider what internship you should get to build your resume, you should get As in all your classes, and there is very little conversation on what does the student want. The idea of Treehouse is to shift the conversation in college and re-imagine what this experience could be.

So how do you view the ideal college experience?

One of our lines is “reclaiming college as a time to explore who we are as people, to dream bigger, to connect meaningfully and honestly with others and to play.” We need to remind ourselves that we are still young and we don’t have to have it all figured out yet. That kind of paints a broad picture of what we are going for with Treehouse, which is to move away from this pressure to perform. We are constantly on the stage whether that be academically, socially, or professionally, and we are constantly trying to impress rather than do things we really want to do.

How does Treehouse plan to help make this cultural change?

So far what we have been doing is we have had a few candlelit conversations, which serve two purposes. They are first meant to bring students together who otherwise wouldn’t interact.  And second is to foster good conversation; moving away from the small talk that dominates on campus and moving toward real, honest conversation. We also played a game on Friday night of Fugitive across campus and that was a huge success.

Our main programming though and our official launch will be in January with the official launch of what we are thinking of as our “Human Incubator.” The idea is to create a time and a space every week where people can create a sort of “Dead Poets Society” atmosphere where we can bring in professors to inspire students and have students reflect and talk about their experiences. It is all about questions like what does happiness or success look like for you or me? What kind of world do I want to live in?

So you don’t think that being able to have a career later and being able to self-search are mutually exclusive things within college?

No, not at all, and that is why with those three functions I mentioned the point is not to say the first two functions [academic and professional development] are wrong. Those are essential to college too. The point is that they are not in balance. For a whole host of reasons, we are seeing — not only at Georgetown, but at a host of schools across the country — this business, this pressure cooker, and this idea that we have to spend all of our time doing things somehow tied to what we are doing [in the future], and this is a really big problem. College is losing its magic because it is becoming just another stepping-stone or another rung in the ladder to nowhere, where in reality we decide where the end of our ladder is. What Treehouse is trying to do is bring magic back to this experience, to say that we have four years and we do need to develop professionally and we do need to develop as students into smart intellectual people but we also need to understand ourselves.

A lot of people talk about the mentality of “Work hard, play hard” and I have always found this dichotomy funny because it seems to imply you can only be working or you can only be playing. What are your thoughts?

Yes, that balance is really startling to me. We are bouncing from one extreme to another extreme. What if we spent our time in the middle ground and we could do some play and we can do some work and not view it as I got to go to Lau all night and work on these 20 assignments and then play is very limited. It is almost a question of “Do we still know how to have fun?” .

Instead of “What can college do for me?” we should ask “What can I bring? What are my unique interests and passions and curiosities and how do I share those with people, even if it’s just with my friends?”

 

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  • G

    GrandmaNov 28, 2014 at 2:18 pm

    Since we are both body and immortal soul, our lives should have a balance: work, play, pray.
    Grandma

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