Rio Djiwandana

SFS ’16
Age: 19
Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif.
Major: International Economics

What do you do on campus?
I am an orientation adviser for NSO. I was an ESCAPE leader. I work at the Kennedy RHO. I work at the Center for Student Engagement. I’m a mentor for the Georgetown Scholarship Program. I sometimes feel overcommitted, but mostly, no. 

What do you find most frustrating about Georgetown?
I’ve always thought the purpose of going to college was to try new things and discover your passions, but sometimes at Georgetown, it’s hard to do that because the activities you want to try are restricted. If you really want to try Mock Trial, they won’t take you because you have no experience from high school. It’s hard to try new things and break out of your high school self because you’re forced to do continue what you were doing and can prove you were good at. 

Will you donate to Georgetown and why?
Maybe in the future, when I have money to donate. I would donate to the Georgetown Scholarship Program because it helps first-generation college students and low-income students adjust, and I think that’s a really noble mission. I feel like they could use more resources and support. 

What are your plans after Georgetown? Does this question annoy you? 
I don’t have any plans after Georgetown currently. I do want to have a business-related job, and I guess this question kind of annoys me because I feel like it gets asked a lot at Georgetown, especially because the school is so pre-professional and it reinforces the idea that you have to have your life figured out. In reality you don’t need to do that. 

Is cura personalis embodied here?
I think there are definitely certain circles at Georgetown that really embody cura personalis, such as the Center for Social Justice and groups that are run through that, but it’s also really easy to forget because Georgetown is so pre-professional. There is a lot of emphasis and pressure on students to find really prestigious internships and one-track career paths. 

What’s your favorite class you’ve taken at Georgetown? 
I don’t know, dude. I took a history class called “The History of Sex and Celibacy” with Professor Amy Leonard — it was really interesting. We examined nuns and prostitutes in medieval Europe and how that related to the female empowerment and female identity. 

How did you pick Georgetown?
In the end, I was deciding between Georgetown and the University of California, Berkeley. I thought I was going to go to Berkeley because I got a really great scholarship that gave me a lot of perks, but then when I visited Berkeley, I didn’t like it at all. It was very academically focused and very similar to my home environment and I didn’t want to go there. I decided on the last day possible to go to Georgetown, even though I hadn’t visited. I got a lot of phone calls from GAAP students. My world history teacher had gone to Georgetown and told me he really liked it, and I talked to someone from my area who went here, and they were all telling me great things about it. I was excited to go there even though I’d never visited.

Where are you from? Compare and contrast it to Georgetown. Where are you more comfortable?
I’m from Los Angeles. I feel like a big difference is between the West Coast and the East Coast in general is that everyone in the West Coast is so much more laid back and everyone here is very stressed and rushed, so that was something that I had to adjust to. Coming from a large public high school in L.A., I felt that there was definitely a difference in academic caliber here. Also, my neighborhood primarily consisted of immigrant families that are either Hispanic or Asian, and here, there is a lot more diversity in the sense that there are more races present, but it’s also very white-dominated, which is different.  

What’s the biggest change you’ve consciously made in your life and why?
I became really addicted to chewing gum and I started going through several packs of chewing gum a day. I decided to quit, and it really liberated me. It was a very nervous habit of mine. 

If you could lead a protest on one thing, what would it be?
Immigration reform. I feel like it is a really important issue that doesn’t really get a lot of attention compared to other subjects. Coming from an immigrant family and growing up in a place where there are a lot of immigrants both documented and undocumented, it made me realize it’s dumb to base someone’s citizenship off where they were born, especially in America. I feel like a lot of undocumented Americans are just as American as regular Americans, so it’s very unfair. Especially children and young people who were undocumented and brought here by their parents: it’s really unfair to them because they didn’t have a say in where they wanted to live, either, when they immigrated here. It’s wrong to punish them for a decision that they didn’t really make. 

Interview by Braden McDonald