Pavan Rajgopal

SFS ’15
Age: 20
Hometown: Pittsburgh, Pa.
Major: International Politics (Security Studies)
Certificate: International Business Diplomacy

What do you do at Georgetown?
I’m on the GUSA Election Commission. I help to overseen and run the campus-wide elections that we have. I’m also pretty heavily involved in the Georgetown International Relations Club and the Georgetown International Relations Association, which is a 501(c)(3) which runs NCSC and NAIMUN, our two Model UN conferences. I was secretary general of NAIMUN LI and I’m currently the chief executive officer going into next year. 

Can you tell me a little bit about where you’re from and compare it and contrast it to Georgetown. Where do you feel more comfortable?
I definitely grew up in privilege, like a lot of people who come to Georgetown. Both my parents were professionals, and I grew up in the suburbs in a strong public school district, and I always thought of myself as someone who’s very well off. Coming to Georgetown, you realize that level of privilege is somewhat eclipsed by what others had, and at first, that was hard for me to adjust to, but I think over time you meet people from all types of backgrounds. Just because it seems like everyone at Georgetown is walking around in $75 shorts and Sperrys, you really do meet a wide variety of people. You start to break down those categories; even the richest and most privileged kids at Georgetown bring unique experiences to the table. And by the same token, even those who aren’t as well enough add an extra dimension. 

What do you find most frustrating about Georgetown?
I think the culture here is sort of preprofessional. And that’s good, I didn’t want to go to a school where people were getting arrested and protesting all the time, or where there was just a party culture and nothing else. But I think it’s frustrating at Georgetown when you compare yourself to other people and see, oh wow, this kid’s done five internships, or when you talk to your friends and their job prospects and internship prospects are more important than what’s going on inside the classroom. I think Georgetown is a very political school, but it doesn’t have a lot of activists. You have more people who kind of want to work within the system and take that internship or something, which is different from what you see at most other schools but can be frustrating at some times, because it seems like people are just preparing for the next step, not really taking the time to step back and critically reflect on what they’re learning. It’s really telling that when you come to Georgetown, most of the freshmen think they want to do public service of some kind, get involved in nonprofit work, even in government, and by the end, 50 to 60 percent of people end up doing consulting or finance — not necessarily because they’re passionate about it but because it seems like the next logical step. I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing — I think it’s good that Georgetown kids are more realistic than at other schools — but I sometimes wish that people would take a step back and critically reflect on what they want instead of following the rest of the crowd on to the next thing.

Do you feel obliged to be busy at Georgetown?
Yeah, definitely. The Georgetown culture of stress is something people talk about all the time and it’s definitely prevalent. It’s a token of honor to be able to tell your friends that you have five midterms and six papers to write. To some degree it’s good, because it definitely forces you to be busy and put the effort in and work hard, but by the same token, the work itself shouldn’t be what’s important; it should be the experiences you get out of that, and sometimes we miss that. It can also be tempting to take on commitments for the sake of taking on commitments.

What do you like most about this place?
I love the location and the people who come here. Being in D.C. just gives you so many opportunities, beyond just having access to internships and places to work. Just the opportunity to go down to the National Mall and see all these incredible monuments or the opportunity to get involved in a political campaign or the opportunity to meet people from around the world. 

Do you feel like you fit in here?
When I first arrived at Georgetown, I think it was a bit of a culture shock for me, and I didn’t think that I fit in. Over time, by getting more involved in activities here and by generally sort of realizing that everyone else was just as uncomfortable adjusting to the new environment, I found my place and a great group of friends and activities to be involved in. My advice to anyone starting college is: It does get better. You just have to get involved and step outside your comfort zone and do things that might seem uncomfortable or foreign to you.

What are your plans after Georgetown and does that question annoy or stress you out?
It kind of does, just because it seems the closer I get to having to make that decision, the more pressure there is to forget why I came here in the first place and what I’m actually interested in doing and just follow the people around me. It’s really stressful when all your friends are getting internships or jobs and you don’t necessarily have one. There’s so much structure and resources around finance and consulting or even things like Teach for America, and that structure makes it tempting to get why you actually came here in the first place. I came to Georgetown, ideally, wanting to do something in government, and I hope to do that. But I’m also realistic and I realize that the job market isn’t great and I’ll probably have to go to graduate school sometime. And to do that, I’ll need to find a way to pay for that. These are questions I wish someone had raised with me before I came, just so I could have evaluated and considered them. I was choosing between Georgetown and a local state school where my dad was a professor, and sometimes I think, would it have been worth it to save the money, go there, and then go to grad school elsewhere at a place like Georgetown? I think about it, and it’s a serious question to consider given the amount of money my parents spent on this education. I was blessed to have their support and not take out loans like a lot of my peers. But then I keep thinking of all the intangible experiences, like Georgetown Day, being able to go to inauguration, those kind of things, and you really can’t put a price tag on that, the same kind of way. 

So would you have done things differently?
Honestly, if I’d gone back three years, considering all the great experiences I’ve had, I couldn’t see myself at any other school. There’s no other place that would have given me these opportunities.

What’s your favorite class you’ve taken here?
I’m a security studies guys, but I’m not quite into guns and bombs like everyone else. I took a class with Professor [Keith] Hrebenak, really tough, intimidating, I was pretty scared, but I learned so much from the class, just being challenged by reading what was basically War College-level military doctrine. It was really interesting and went sort of beyond what you’d get in normal Georgetown classes. I think sometimes we have a tendency to think after taking intro to IR or CPS, we can solve all the world’s problems, and I realized through that class that things are a lot more complicated and I’m not quite as smart or well-equipped to think about those issues as I thought I was. So I learned a lot and was challenged in a way I wasn’t in other classes, and I really enjoyed that.

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?
I think the biggest challenge I’ve ever done was running NAIMUN. I sort of came in having done Model UN and been pretty passionate, but I’d never undertaken something of that size. I faced a lot of challenge and things didn’t turn out exactly as I’d planned — it snowed that weekend, which really screwed everything up — there were definitely challenges, but afterward, just being able to look back and look out across the stage after it was all done and see thousands of people on the other side who I directly impacted, that’s an experience I could have never gotten elsewhere. And that’s an experience that was so rewarding to me.

Interview by Mallika Sen