<p>by: Fr. Ryan Maher, S.J</p>
<p>Published: Thursday, August 23, 2007
Updated: Wednesday, January 19, 2011 00:01</p>
<p>For the average Hoya, earning a Georgetown degree is not all that difficult. You know what to do and how to do it: show up, work hard, pay attention and study intelligently. You wouldn't be here if you hadn't mastered the basic skills needed to complete our undergraduate curricula. Keep your head in the game and you will rack up the credits and meet the requirements needed for a Georgetown degree.</p>
<p>But while getting a Georgetown degree is one thing, getting a Georgetown education is quite another.</p>
<p>Unlike the requirements for a Georgetown degree, the ingredients of a Georgetown education are hard to pin down. You can't just look them up. They don't lend themselves to catchy sound bites or flashy Web sites. No professor or dean can quantify your mastery of them at the end of the semester. They're the stuff of wisdom and insight earned the old-fashioned way: through making choices and learning from their consequences, through making commitments and being shaped by their demands, through making friends and discovering how to love better.</p>
<p>We'll know at the end of four years whether you've earned a Georgetown degree, but it will take a lot longer than that for the world to discover if you've gotten a Georgetown education. That will depend on the kind of life you live, the kind of spouse you become, the kind of parent you turn out to be, the kind of citizen or boss you are.</p>
<p>When it comes to all of this, today's Hoyas are the inheritors of some deeply rooted blessings and challenges. It is no exaggeration to say that our campus is filled every year with an embarrassingly large number of the most interesting, talented, intelligent, generous, big-hearted people you will ever meet. Hundreds of them, thousands even.</p>
<p>When it comes to quality human companionship, we Hoyas are spoiled.</p>
<p>As if that weren't enough, we are part of the finest university in the capital city of the most powerful nation in the history of the world. Not a bad place to be an 18 to 22-year-old who wants to learn.</p>
<p>To top it all off, we live, study and grow in the nurturing arms of a tradition that has long insisted that human life is a gift given with eternal intentions. That teaching and learning are sacred; that the shaping of governments, economies and cultures matters - not just to nations, but to God. We are part of an institution committed to enabling us to live fulfilling lives in a complex world.</p>
<p>That's the good news. The not-so-good news is that it's not so simple.</p>
<p>There are challenges bred into the very fiber of the Georgetown experience. Some of them come from the sorts of people we attract, some from the sort of city and nation in which we live, some from the sorts of motives that drive us. Whatever the source, the challenges are real. They can be formidable foes when it comes to getting a Georgetown education.</p>
<p>A couple of years ago I had a frank conversation with a second-semester senior at the Tombs. I asked what he thought was the most valuable thing he would take away from Georgetown. "Father, I gotta be honest," he said. "The best thing I am taking away is the ability to make a butt load of money." Well, at least he was honest.</p>
<p>Truth be told, though, there's a little of him in all of us, stubbornly entwined with our better selves. Overcoming that is a challenge.</p>
<p>While we're being honest, we might as well acknowledge the tawdry tendrils that have wound their way into our garden. If you watch MTV or surf around YouTube, it's not hard to get the impression that college is about two things: getting loaded and getting laid. I guess that's not really so surprising, again, given the culture in which we live. What might surprise you is that you can sometimes get the same impression from watching GUTV. When it comes to values - educational and otherwise - ours is a complicated campus.</p>
<p>Finally, we might as well admit from the get-go that we live on a campus where the power of pretense haunts us all. You know the drill. The little voice that we are sure is softly cooing in everyone else's head: "I have everything under control. People like me. I know exactly what I am doing. I know exactly where I want to be in 10, 15, 20 years and I know exactly how to get there." We can all too easily find ourselves pretending that we hear that same soothing voice. It's pathetic, but it's powerful.</p>
<p>So there you have them, a few of the blessings and challenges that come with being a Hoya these days. Since by the grace of God we're all in this together, why not commit ourselves to finding ways to foster the former so you can better overcome the latter - together.</p>
<p>In other words, how about we see to it that you get a Georgetown degree and a Georgetown education?</p>
<p>Fr. Ryan Maher, S.J., is assistant dean for academic affairs in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown's campus in Doha, Qatar. He can be reached at rjm27georgetown.edu.</p>
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