Anastasia
Photography courtesy of Anastasia.
If you’re reading this, be kind to yourself and others, and be willing to learn.
I’m an international student, a junior at Georgetown SFS Qatar campus. This may be your first time hearing about us, but we hear about you straight from NSO. We come to this university knowing that it has multiple sites, yet many students in the DC campus have not heard of us, so let me introduce you to GUQ!
We are a roughly 500-student campus in Education City, which is a Qatar Foundation initiative that hosts 8 universities, 6 of which are US institutions. There are more than 75 nationalities represented among the GUQ student body! We have the same curriculum and majors, the same values, and we graduate with the same diploma as the main campus (GU campus in DC). Professors from the main campus often come to give guest lectures or even teach a semester or two at GUQ. Most of us go to the main campus for the semester abroad during junior year. We tell you guys about our school, and it is so fun to see the surprise on someone’s face if they haven’t heard of GUQ before.
Except these past few weeks haven’t been fun, it has been hard for all of us. We had spring break during the last week of February, and the classes were supposed to resume on March 1st. You may have guessed by now that we never went back. On February 28th we were woken up by the sounds of threat alerts on our phones, and the shock waves from missile explosions shaking our windows and doors. I will be speaking for myself but I know my classmates will agree. I spent that whole day (and the next weeks to come..) glued to the screens, constantly checking news and talking to friends, confirming if the sound we heard was a missile, a helicopter, or simply a loud car. I felt as safe as one can possibly feel amidst a war, because I knew Qatar Air Defence Forces were (or, rather, have been) doing everything in their power to protect us. (Now, as an SFS student, you can imagine how hard it is for me now not to digress into talking about the war, but I will try my best!) Some of us have left Qatar, some have stayed and are still living in this.
This time, it is no longer fun that people do not know we exist. This time I think about Cura Personalis, and I wish you’d know about us like we know about you. I know you all know about the war from the news, but I figured hearing someone just like you talking about it first-hand would feel different. Of course, everyone is going through something, and there is always going to be someone who has it worse. We shouldn’t ignore our own suffering just because someone is suffering more.
But I also believe that the world has become so self-centered, that sometimes we may forget to think of others at all. It is easy to say ‘I choose my peace’ until you wake up to that peace being taken. I know we can’t solve all the world's problems if we stress and agonize over everything, and it is not what I am asking. I am just asking everyone to make a conscious choice every day to be kind. To yourself, because your feelings matter. And to others, because their feelings matter too. And I am asking everyone to be willing to learn something new, be it about yourself, your friends, strangers, another city, country, or a continent.
We are all in this world together, and when you have the capacity to do so, share your kindness, because you never know when someone else may need it.
Anastasia, Georgetown University Qatar
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