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During my second semester of university, I was faced with the very important decision of picking which first history class I would take. Reading that sentence probably makes it sound like I’m being dramatic, but let me explain.
Deadlines, exams, and papers. Rushing to uni in the morning, speed walking in the hallways to get to back-to-back meetings, all-nighters during finals week, and balancing work with readings. These are the adrenaline rushes I've grown accustomed to when it comes to academics at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q). But with the Track and Field club, there’s a different kind of rush I get: runner’s high.
Spring 2026 brings a new cohort of Desert Hoya Storytellers as the semester goes into full swing. This semester, this spectacular group of 15 students from 11 countries will write, document and share what makes being a Georgetown student in Qatar special. Through their stories, they’ll offer an honest look into life at GU-Q, shaped by curiosity, community, and global perspectives.
When I left Rwanda for Qatar, I recall it with so much excitement, but also a kind of fear I didn’t want to acknowledge. How will I do for the first time away from my family? A new place, new people, new life, leaving everything behind. I kept wondering, How will I make friends? Will I just blend into the background?
Emotions flared and tensions were high. Only 48 hours remained before complete environmental destruction. The FSO Safer, an oil tanker was leaking in the Red Sea and the greater the delay to extract the oil and fix the leak, the closer the world came to loss of marine biodiversity and disruption of an essential trade route. This hypothetical scenario was my introduction to Georgetown’s International Negotiation and Crisis Simulation.
“How should we reinvent the city?” This is the type of question that Georgetown students like me are being trained to answer on the daily. We talk about a plethora of things–from the stock market to the politics of conserving energy. Here, discourse that questions, provokes, and stretches you is normal. So when I landed in Buenos Aires in Argentina for the Doha Debates Town Hall, it felt like the most natural extension of what we already do in the classroom.
I used to think food was simple. You grow it, you buy it, you eat it. But enrolling in the class Seeds of Science taught by Professor Rowan Ellis back in Spring 2025 changed my views in a way I didn’t expect.
In Spring 2025, I boarded my first-ever flight to the “West,” bound for Washington, D.C. I was one of only a few students from GU-Q studying abroad that semester. Most of my classmates had already gone in the fall, and I had initially planned the same. But when I sat down to map out my independent Certificate in South Asian Studies, everything shifted.
The realization that I’ll be graduating in less than six months brought tears I couldn’t control. Today, I have the privilege to call GU-Q my second home. I can go to campus in the middle of the night to play table tennis, walk into the Wellness Center during a crisis and find warmth and care, or step into any department and see familiar faces who greet me with genuine connection. There’s a strange kind of comfort in the small routines here, the elevator that has no close button but somehow I don’t mind. Having karak in the atrium almost every lunch hour. And knowing that Frances and Gladys, security guards in our building, will worry if they don’t see me on campus for two or three days. Joebee from the O’Street Café knows my exact order without me saying a word. It’s in these simple, ordinary moments that I’ve found belonging, in shared laughter, inside jokes, and the quiet joy of being known.
Every semester at GU-Q feels like opening a new chapter, but Fall 2025 feels especially meaningful to me. The first thing I thought when I stepped onto campus on the first day of class was “Oh my god, I am actually not a freshman anymore.” As scary as that is, it’s also extremely exciting. I’m taking a few classes that have really scratched my brain in all the right ways, let me tell you all about them!
