Berkley Center

Georgetown is a community. We take classes in the same buildings. We wait in line at Leo’s at 12:00 p.m. desperate for lunch. We live in apartments together. We study together. We acknowledge each other on campus, even that one person who happens to take the same route as us at 2:00 p.m. on a Tuesday. We are Hoyas and we are proud of it.

But what happens when that sense of community is lost?

The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind as I boarded a plane to Heathrow Airport a few weeks ago, but the answer to this question has filled most of my thoughts ever since. I never realized, until I hit the streets of London, the constant interactions I have at Georgetown. The campus, while a part of DC, is its own community mostly filled with undergraduates, making it almost impossible to walk more than five minutes without seeing a friendly face. Leo’s is set up in large round tables, a perfect setting for talking and meeting. Even some classes are structured in a social way, with small group seminars and group projects that can be stressful but encourage us Hoyas to branch out and work with our peers.

University College London (UCL), I would say, is Georgetown’s antisocial counterpart. Cafeterias only exist in a few select first-year halls, most of which are situated in a 20 minute radius throughout the city. The library is set up as rows and rows (and rows and rows and rows) of books with limited seating areas, all of which consist of small wooden desks interspersed throughout the building. Gone are the days of Lau 2, a floor I would only dare step on if I was in desperate need of caffeine, wanted a study break, or had a group assignment to work on. The classes are even structured in a way that discourages interaction amongst your peers, scaring many into thinking that group work on problem sets is the equivalent of plagiarism and barely providing any feasible areas to work in a group setting. With the way the residence halls and classes are structured, I sometimes can go an entire day with only speaking to the guy at the Starbucks near campus who knows me as “Cae like the letter.”

As an education lover, I found this idea of social learning very intriguing. I recently sat in a psychology lecture where the topic of discussion was, “What is more important? What we learn or how we learn.” While what we are learning is obviously important, I never realized how important the how of learning is until I was thrown out of my own comfortable learning environment. Based on my experiences at Georgetown so far, I would say that for us Hoyas, we learn best when we are learning from each other. Yes, Lau 2 may be a social zone filled with conversations about Miley Cyrus’s latest music video, but there are also so many people working through problem sets together, commiserating over a paper that is due in three hours, or talking about the latest current events or campus news. It is that stimulating conversation that I have with my fellow classmates, the ones where I may randomly bring up something interesting that I had learned in class that day, which both solidifies and amplifies what I learn. In a way, it is these conversations that encourage me to learn more.

So what happens when a Hoya loses all of her social learning? Well, I have found new outlets to share what I have learned with others. Blogging, social media, Skype conversations…these all keep me in touch with others and help me give me a sense of the Georgetown learning community. There is, however, no substitute for a lazy afternoon talking about women’s issues with one of my roommates as we eat plates of pasta. And it is these spontaneous conversations that I will be eager to return to.

During an orientation event I had at my dorm here in London recently, I sat and listened to our director encourage us to “learn from our peers.” I can’t say that I have actually learned anything from my peers directly since I’ve been here. And, honestly, I am not sure if I ever will while I am here in London. Maybe it is because we are Americans. Or maybe it is because of our Jesuit values of education and community. But, when it comes to learning from my peers, it is from my fellow Hoyas that I learn the best.