Megan Guan

NHS ’16
Age: 19
Hometown: Brooklyn, N.Y.
Major: Nursing

What are some of your extracurriculars?
One of them that I do is FDFD, which is a break off from Club Filipino and it’s a Filipino fusion hip-hop dance crew. We do dances to Filipino hip-hop songs, American hip-hop songs and it’s all student-run so all student choreos. And I also do Hoya Helpers which does local tutoring at the local middle school up the block. 

What are your plans after Georgetown?
Straight-up working at the hospital for two to three years and then go back to get my nurse practitioner whatever specialty I end up liking, practice a few more years, and then a master’s in anesthesiology.

What’s your favorite class you’ve taken at Georgetown and why?
I think it would have to be pharmacology, the one I’m taking right now. I think it’s a very pertinent class to what I’m doing; it teaches you about drugs and drug interactions and its exactly what I will need to know. It’s one of those classes that’s more tangible, like you learn something and you use it. So I think it’s my favorite even though it’s not the easiest class … it’s all straight up memorization.

Can you compare and contrast New York and Georgetown? Where do you feel more comfortable?
You don’t want to get me started on this. I definitely like New York better. I think as a New Yorker, most new Yorkers don’t like leaving the city for too long. Georgetown is in the city of D.C. but it’s also not because it doesn’t have a Metro in it and its not accessible to everybody and it’s not convenient … it’s a walking city but there’s not a lot of city-like stuff, buildings aren’t tall, not that that’s a problem but there are certain areas that are like dead zones at certain times and it’s not interesting. Only certain neighborhoods have interest. Like in New York you can walk straight up and down Broadway like past Central Park and there’s something to do along the way. But like in D.C., you just walk and like every so often you would hit a neighborhood that has a little bit of interesting life … and like I understand why the Metro doesn’t run here 24 hours because people don’t need it 24 hours, but at the same time it’s just not convenient. It’s just the population here is different than it is in New York. There are a lot of young people here in D.C. but they’re mostly young working adults whereas in New York there’s a lot of young people doing interesting things all the time.

What do you do to relax?
I watch a lot of TV in Cantonese and English. I leave Georgetown often, even if it’s like Foggy Bottom or Glover Park. Just to get away. I go out to Eastern Market often. I eat at restaurants, new and interesting ones. Hanging out with friends.

What’s the biggest change you’ve consciously made in your life andI think the biggest conscious change I’ve made recently is just eating healthier and being healthier because I realized that you only get one of everything. Even though you can transplant half the stuff you lose, it’s not worth it. So eating healthier, fresher, drinking less alcohol, consuming less trans fats — all of that.

What do you think is the best thing about Georgetown?
I think the best thing about Georgetown is that it can be whatever you want it to be. There are a lot of opportunities here at Georgetown and if you’re internally motivated and driven, you can see and learn a lot of things, meet a lot of people. But if you’re not and you only come to learn and be in the library and that’s what you get out of it. So I think that’s what’s interesting about it. Whereas other college campuses don’t have as many opportunities. Like they can’t say that we have as many famous keynote speakers or as many influential keynote speakers come, where we have many interesting events that happen around the area that we have access to.

What can make Georgetown better? How can it improve?
The library would be the first step. More inviting, one with more natural light, one that’s prettier to be in, one that’s more conducive to people wanting to spend time in it. I think reforming the redundancy with Georgetown, like with paperwork, housing lottery, all that can be done online and even though it is online we don’t do it in a way that’s easily understood by everybody. And we have so many different accounts; we should be able to merge them. I just feel like we have too much paperwork online to do.

Interview by Michelle Xu