OPINION
friday, september 28, 2018
THE HOYA
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amman it
INTO THE FEMININE GENIUS
Truc Nguyen
Finding Faith in Choir
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efore coming to college, my faith felt like an obligation. I come from a long line of Catholics who taught me belief in God was a necessity — and anything short of complete faith would guarantee damnation. I associated Mass with loss of my free will and wondered how many countless hours I had wasted in the pew of a church. But once I got to Georgetown University, I found my old habits hard to bury. Soon, I was attending 9 p.m. Mass in Dahlgren Chapel every Sunday. As a freshman, church was the only place where life didn’t feel new, and I didn’t feel so different or weird. I knew how to be Catholic; I had been doing it all my life. I went to Mass because I knew my parents would be happy knowing faith was still part of my life. But I didn’t expect to find something deeper.
I started to ask myself how I was serving God in everything I did, as it gave me the strength to persevere knowing that I was doing everything for His glory. I found God in the dingy choir room of my home parish singing “Ubi Caritas.” When I sang classics like “On Eagle’s Wings” and “Do Not Be Afraid,” I was reminded of the existence of a God who was bigger and stronger than the problems in my life. These hymns comforted me, as they told me I am never alone or forgotten. I held onto the joy and happiness I felt when I sang those hymns at my home parish and took them with me when I signed up for chapel choir freshman year, hoping for another place where I could find God. As a freshman, chapel choir became a harbor of sorts from the constant newness of living on my own. I found the same God I found when I was 10 years old, but in newer hymns and psalms. In “The Servant Song,” I found a Jesus who was willing to laugh and cry with me, even though I never asked him to. In “These Alone Are Enough,” I
found a Jesus who challenged me to forgo my worries and fears and follow him. This simple and pretty tune, based on St. Ignatius’ “Suscipe” prayer, challenges us to return to God our “liberty, memory and understanding” with the blind faith that He will use them to create a better world according to His will. There’s a grandness in this request that demands an absolute surrender of free will: Am I capable of shedding all that I am and letting God’s love and grace be enough for me? Sometimes I don’t think I am. On those days, I tuck myself away in Dahlgren Chapel and remind myself that there are bigger and better things than what conventional society tells me to worship. Even though there are some days when I cannot say truthfully that God’s love and grace are enough for me, it’s something I aspire to. Chapel choir was a place where I learned how to love God and, through that love, how to love myself. There was a freedom in serving God that allowed me to stop worrying so much about resume-building or good grades. I started to ask myself how I was serving God in everything I did, as it gave me the strength to persevere knowing that I was doing everything for His glory. If you had told me when I first got to Georgetown that God would become my reason for fulfillment, I would have laughed. As a freshman, I thought happiness meant being the best pre-med student with the most impressive resume. I wasn’t looking for God’s love and grace because I didn’t think I needed them to be happy. I didn’t set out to be devout or religious, but it was through the hymns sung in chapel choir and the quiet moments sitting in Dahlgren at odd hours of the night that I found a God who loved all parts of me, even though sometimes I have found it hard to love Him back. Through Him, I found a happiness that revealed the most authentic version of me. Truc Nguyen is a junior in the School of Nursing and Health Studies. Into the Feminine Genius appears online every other Wednesday.
The murky legal status of ride-sharing apps and a dearth of efficient, inexpensive public transportation options contribute to the mounting frustration plaguing Amman — impenetrable traffic.
Untangling Amman’s Traffic Crisis
Hannah Urtz
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n a typical morning in Amman, Jordan, the 4.5-mile commute from my apartment in the western part of the city to my school can take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes, often involving several cancelled Ubers, some haggling over taxi prices and the occasional lie to a police officer — “No, sir, this is not an Uber!” I can pay close to $5 a day for the route that Google Maps estimates should take 17 minutes in “normal” traffic conditions. However, traffic conditions here are anything but normal. Amman’s streets are plagued by myriad problems: The murky legal status of ridesharing apps, cumbersome taxi encounters and a dearth of efficient, inexpensive public transportation options contribute to the mounting frustration plaguing Amman — impenetrable traffic. This flawed system requires comprehensive and collective action on the part of the Jordanian government, daily commuters, and private companies and investors who have vowed to make a difference. Here, the streets are the great
equalizer. Regardless of where you come from, everyone suffers, and all must work to address Amman’s urban mobility crisis. With few large-scale public transportation options, most Jordanians own their own cars; nearly 1.5 million cars are registered in Amman. Some resort to taxis and ridesharing apps like Uber when necessary, while others use the 350 large buses designated for the city of more than 4 million people. These rides account for less than 5 percent of journeys in Amman each day, according to a transportation consultant. Uber, which is unlicensed in Jordan, creates plenty of problems, causing frenzied drivers to concoct a plausible story to deny that they’re paid to drive me. If caught working for Uber, drivers are fined heavily. My first Uber ride in the country from the airport ended with my driver receiving a 100JD — US$140 — ticket and me getting a curt “Ahlan wa sahlan” from the police officer: Welcome to Jordan. Taxis, while legal, come with risk of a “broken meter,” a tactic often used by drivers who prefer to negotiate prices with their passenger. Cabs are cash only and require precise directions to the destination. All in all, they can be cumbersome and unreliable. Smaller “coaster buses,” which operate along a fixed route throughout the city, may be a cheaper option but cost more time. Holding space
hired from the hilltop
for 20 to 25 passengers, these buses don’t depart until they are completely full, which can take over an hour during certain times of the day. Regardless of the transportation method, the inevitable soul-crushing, maddening traffic remains. In what is designed as a two-lane street, I’ve counted up to 13 distinct lanes of cars attempting to merge into seven new lanes of their own creation. The sheer volume of people and the speed at which they migrated to Amman is a significant factor in the city’s traffic nightmare. The population of Jordan has grown by over 87 percent within the past decade, while Amman’s population has more than doubled. Infrastructure simply hasn’t been able to keep up, and some believe the country may have already lost its opportunity to implement another viable option like a subway or above-ground tram: New construction undertakings would only exacerbate the existing traffic problem. Still, a Rapid Bus Expansion project, which would involve operating modern buses that could carry about 120 passengers on their own designated lanes along Amman’s busiest streets, is expected to launch later in 2018. This project, if it moves forward, would be a great step in the right direction. These issues are felt profoundly by members of society at each level. A 2014 govern-
ment study on youth unemployment, currently at about 39 percent in Jordan, found that about 55 percent of respondents cited transportation barriers as a primary reason for failing to keep or find a job. Not only are ride-sharing apps convenient and affordable when they work without police interference, but they also have the potential to address the high unemployment rate in Jordan. Careem, a ride-sharing app for the Arab world, planned to create 10,000 jobs in the country by 2018. Even Syrian and Iraqi refugees cite the traffic and cost of transportation as a major deterrent to accessing many of the resources the Jordanian government has made available to them, including NGOs, community centers and support groups. In the end, everyone loses. Valuable time, money and energy are being wasted in 13 lanes of cars crowded around a single roundabout. Ride-sharing apps should be allowed to operate unambiguously in Amman; road conditions must be improved and legitimate; and accessible public transportation projects need to be undertaken if the capital is to continue to grow as a hub of prosperity and stability in the Middle East. Hannah Urtz is a junior in the School of Foreign Service. Amman It appears online every other Thursday.
viewpoint • o’hara
Adding Personality to the Job Hunt Sustaining Art as a Public Good
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spent a significant part of my senior year sitting in the upper level of the new Peet’s Coffee applying for jobs. I vividly remember walking down steep 35th Street, turning left on M, and rushing to my table overlooking the line outside Georgetown Cupcake. Some days, I’d browse jobs by sector. Sometimes, I’d do it by geography. Often, I turned to LinkedIn: I’d search companies that seemed interesting, looking for alumni to whom I could reach out. I bookmarked the career pages of companies whose products I loved and whose missions I respected, like Clif Bar, Patagonia and Trek, as well as institutions in which I was already a participant. By Christmas break I was bruised from the process; as a biology and classics major, I put too much pressure on myself too early and held myself to the standard of consulting or finance kids, even though science and related jobs hire on an entirely different cycle. When I returned for my last semester, I approached the search with a fresh heart, taking it as an opportunity to learn and trying my best to enjoy it as an experience. It was in that upper level of Peet’s where I scheduled a final-round interview for a job I knew I didn’t want, where I refreshed my email at least 10 times waiting to hear back from a startup that ultimately ghosted me; where I attempted my first salary negotiation after receiving an offer that I later turned down; and where I texted my mom at least a hundred crying emojis. But in between working on my computer science proj-
ects and drinking at least two dozen hot chocolates, I grew up a lot up there. In particular, I learned to apply for jobs I would actually have been happy to work in, rather than limiting myself to work in a specific field.
Sara Carioscia In January, I finally found the job I have now — from the comfort of my beautiful yellow townhouse. I decided to be entirely myself in my application: I wrote parts of my resume in aquamarine font, told my personal statement like a story and submitted an essay about wolves in Yellowstone National Park as my writing sample. This personality mattered: People told me, “Your resume looked good, but when I saw you studied Egyptian hieroglyphs, I knew I had to meet you.” By the time I arrived to interview for my current job, the interviewers had seen my transcript and knew I’d studied biology. Instead of focusing on these basics, I directed the conversation toward the science writing contest I’d helped establish in the Writing Center and the sponsorships I set up for our triathlon team. I was excited to talk about things I was passionate about and even happier that the interviewers were interested in discussing them with me. More than a
year later, I’m still working there — continuing to use the skills I developed through my own projects. The job search was difficult, and there are a number of ways to measure whether any aspect of it was successful. But I think the most important part of the process is to enjoy each step. I expanded my network and am still in touch with a few people at places I ended up not working. Asking for letters of recommendation gave me the opportunity to start new conversations with old professors, who I now keep updated on my job and life. Putting pieces of myself out on the internet and never hearing anything back was difficult; opening a rejection email six months after applying was worse. However, I am grateful to the people who helped me through the process, by pushing me to write out everything I enjoy, spending hours with me in the Cawley Career Center or taking me to Epicurean for sushi to celebrate when I finally got my job offer. Searching for a job is an awesome opportunity to learn — about a topic, about working and about yourself. And it’s a chance to grow professionally, personally and culturally. It doesn’t have to be defining, and it doesn’t have to be forever. I learned firsthand the value of twice-removed connections and the LinkedIn cold message, and I’m always happy to talk — you can find me at sac258@ georgetown.edu. Sara Carioscia graduated from the College in 2017. This viewpoint is the first installment of Hired from the Hilltop.
M
y parents cried tears of frustration when I told them I was pursuing a degree in art history instead of STEM. Naturally, museums became my safe haven. I grew up north of Boston, with the Museum of Fine Arts a train and subway ticket away. But to visit the museum, I had to pay $18 for a round-trip train ticket and an additional $10 for a child’s ticket. Once I turned 18 and the price doubled, my respite became prohibitively expensive. Museums perpetuate a narrative that the art on their walls belongs to the public. At the same time, though, they need to function as businesses. In 2014, Washington, D.C., lost the Corcoran Gallery of Art when the museum entered financial insolvency. The battle between public trust and business is most evident in the case of rising admission costs. Anger against the increasing fees stems from pricing people out of attending museums and evidence of mismanagement. The battle between public interests and business reality is particularly evident with the second-most visited art museum in the world, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, which uses public funding and sits on public land. Just last year, the museum ended its pay-as-you can entrance fee, citing increasing business costs. New Yorkers with residential documentation are grandfathered into the pay-as-you-can rule as long as they bring their New York identification. This policy makes the mu-
seum inaccessible to immigrants without documentation or people who commute to New York from neighboring states. Museum patrons are already overwhelmingly upper-middle-class white people, and these new pay barriers represent an increased gentrification of knowledge. The gentrification of knowledge bars low-income people of color from viewing their objects of cultural patrimony, which were often forcibly taken or unfairly acquired by white colonizers. Museums seem to be rebuffing visitors who do not have the means to upgrade an admissions fee to a membership. Beyond pricing out visitors, many critics of the Metropolitan Museum argued that a museum should not burden its visitors because of its mismanagement. Paying visitors find the idea that museums are spending their money responsibly hard to believe. Just this week The New York Times reported that the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum paid $6.7 million for a hat that scholars now believe may have never actually belonged to Lincoln. Moreover, from a personal standpoint, it is hard to justify paying for a visit when only 8 percent of museum interns receive a living wage. At the same time, stories about reckless and disrespectful visitors damaging museum artwork seemingly support exclusivity. While we are all taught not to touch the art, not everyone is a respectful guest. In 2017, a selfietaker smashed a pumpkin in Kusama’s “Infinity Mirrored
Room — All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” at the Hirshhorn Museum. More maliciously, in 2011, a woman at D.C.’s National Gallery of Art attempted to attacked a Paul Gauguin painting but was prevented from causing damage by its plexiglass protection. Museums face large crowds, and they have to be mindful and prepared for future damage. Accessibility and conservation are not mutually exclusive. If museums want to stop the tide of people jumping ship because they now have to pay admissions fees, museums must be more transparent to the public about affordable ways to enjoy the museum and where admissions revenue goes. One example of maintaining accessibility is advertising free admission days. Notably, Bank of America offers monthly free days at over 200 museums for its customers. In regard to conservation costs, museums could adopt the National Portrait Gallery’s “Portrait Circle” model. This model allows members to adopt an artwork, with the higher cost of their membership covering conservation fees that would usually come from general admission fees. There are ways of balancing conservation and accessibility, but raising admissions fees and citing growing business costs without explaining to the public what these costs are is a detrimental way to handle the dilemma.
Katie O’Hara is a first-year
graduate student in art and museum studies.