Justine Warden

COL ’17
Age: 18
Hometown: Flemington, N.J.
Major: Undeclaring

What do you do on campus?
I’m really involved in Vita Saxa, Georgetown Right to Life, and I’m in concert choir, I’m in the Catholic Daughters of America, I’m in the 7:30 contemporary mass choir, I’m in Strive for College; I sing at Latin mass, and that’s it.

Do you feel obliged to be busy at Georgetown?
Definitely. I think because everyone is busy. I think that if you’re not constantly running somewhere, you’re being unproductive and you’re wasting your time, and if you’re not constantly working, then you are definitely wasting your time.

What are your plans for after Georgetown?
I’m thinking about law school. If not maybe I’ll join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps or something like that.

Compare and contrast your hometown to Georgetown and where are you more comfortable?
I think I am more comfortable here because I’ve found a lot of people that think like me and want to do similar things. Flemington is like a really small town — a  lot of the same types of people, and there’s not much to do there. And then you come to Georgetown, you come to D.C., and there’s all these different types of people and there’s always different things going on. There’s always something going on, which is really exciting for me. I think I’ve grown to like Georgetown a lot better than my hometown.

What is the hardest thing you’ve ever done?
Leaving home was really hard for me. I was really close with my family, really close with my friends. I don’t know if that’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was definitely very difficult.

What is your favorite class that you’ve taken at Georgetown?
Last semester, I took a class about Spanish saints, and it really opened my eyes to a lot of different tenants of theology, a lot of different saints that were really cool, and helped me see different aspects of Catholic spirituality.

How do you think your spirituality has either helped or challenged you this year?
It’s definitely helped me to stay strong through different challenges that I’ve come across. And my spirituality itself has also been challenged a lot, just through different questions that I’ve never encountered and different faiths that I’ve never encountered.

What were some of those challenging questions you faced?
In “The Problem of God,” the question came up a lot: Why would God allow so much evil in the world and why would God allow bad things to happen to good people, and it was very jarring for me because I don’t know why, but I just never thought of God that way. So that’s one, and I kind of grappled with that for a while.

If you could lead a protest on one thing, what would it be?
I really don’t know, I can’t pick one thing. One thing that I’ve been thinking about is the different reasons why women would choose an abortion, and while I am very against abortion, I think it is important for both sides of the movement, pro-life and pro-choice, to acknowledge the different socio-economic reasons why women would choose an abortion, and I think it’s important to attack those structural violence that put them in poverty and in a situation of danger rather than attack the woman herself. 

Interview by Michelle Xu