Showing 28 “Reflection” posts
Sazid Hasan is a second year student at Georgetown University in Qatar. I have always liked museums. However, looking back on my first year at GU-Q, I now feel…
Hoang is a multilingual second year at Georgetown majoring in International Economics. He speaks Vietnamese, English, and French, while also learning Arabic. For the Desert Hoya Blog, he shares…
Zarrish Ahmed, a recent graduate at Georgetown University in Qatar, reflects on finding home, holding still, and being held by a community during a regional crisis that tested everything…
Dear First-year me, You just got into Georgetown University in Qatar. You’re excited. You’re anxious. You’ve already made three Pinterest boards titled “Uni outfits” and “college glow up.” You think you’re prepared. I’m writing to you from one semester in the future. Sorry to inform you that the glow up is still pending but it is safe to say that I have learned a few things. So before you overpack, overthink, and over-plan your entire academic career, read this.
In the weeks before starting at Georgetown, I found myself worrying about something new. This time, it wasn’t the acceptance rate or the cost of tuition; instead, it was the campus culture. I had watched far too many American sitcoms and imagined college life as football games, cheerleaders at Homecoming, and crowded dorm parties. While Georgetown Qatar might not have those things, what we do have is something far more unique: a customized experience of an American education in Qatar.
When I first applied to university, I didn’t imagine myself ending up on a Middle East campus. Like many students my age, graduating from an American school in Turkey, my idea of “college life” was shaped by American cities, American campuses, and the kind of cultural familiarity that comes from growing up under the influence of U.S. soft power. In my final year of high school, I didn’t even know international branch campuses were really a thing, even for the most impressive schools in the U.S. that my friends and I dreamed about.
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.
“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.
