To kick off the school year right, Hoyas United in Graduate Service (HUGS) organized a service project at the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in northeast Washington, DC along the Anacostia River. The project provided a chance to see an area of the capital city that most Georgetown students rarely visit, to do something positive for Washington, DC and for first- and second-year MSFS students to mingle as the Fall 2013 semester begins. Students spent the morning pulling invasive species like porcelain berry and hogweed from the watershed, chatting about the program and discussing what first-year students can expect from the year ahead.
Abdul Hameed Akbar, a second-year student from Afghanistan, said he joined the project to help the local community. “I’ve been in the US for over a year now; I’ve enjoyed every moment of my life here, and I thought it would be fair to give back something to this wonderful community and these wonderful people,” Akbar said. “Also, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to meet some first-years and set for them an example of community service. The first-years were very open about sharing their experiences. We had some wonderful conversations about their concentrations, the disciplines they’re going to pursue in the future and the parts of the world that interest them. We gave them some advice about what courses to take and what it’s like to be an MSFSer. [We want] to make sure they feel like they’re part of the MSFS community.”
Debi Ou-Yang, a first-year student from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and a recently returned Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand, said she enjoyed the chance to get to know other students in the program. “I wanted to get to know other MSFSers. There were six second-years who were all willing to share their experiences and talk about what they’d done over the summer and recommended professors and classes,” Ou-Yang said. “I thought it was really interesting to hear about their summer internships, and it gave me some ideas about what I could do myself.”