Let’s hear from two Georgetown Prep boarding students on how they have grown to become confident boarding students.

Eric Cruz ‘25, Baltimore, MD
“Entering a world as foreign to me as Georgetown Prep was a challenging experience, but one that I am forever grateful for. My transition into boarding life in a school where I knew no one was scary for my young and immature fourteen-year-old self. I was not ready to leave my home, friends, and family, because I couldn’t imagine being without them–they were all I knew. To make this transition even more challenging, I experienced the stress of managing an increased workload. But with the help of my current roommate, Alex Murphy-Glidden, I was able to find my home away from home. We could succeed through each other as we always had each other’s backs. We had known each other since the first day of our freshman year. With the encouragement of Alex and my brother, Jose Cruz ’16, I found a passion for rugby.

Initially, I was hesitant as I wasn’t a big kid, but the encouragement made me give it a shot. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. The rugby community at Prep is like a family. Everyone knows each other and the chemistry on the field is unbeaten. This was a unique moment in my life because I had never been part of a group so big but so connected. With the help of my brothers, I could call Prep home.”

Matteo Yu ’27, Shanghai, China
Every time I enter a new environment, I imagine myself as a fisherman. Not the old man in Hemingway’s novel that fights off sharks to protect his tuna. I imagine myself as a fisherman that casts his nets everywhere, so at the dinner table that day, I will have the choice of crab, salmon, or octopus. Arriving at Prep, I had the same mentality. Master Yoda said, “Do or do not, there is no try”. I say, “See everything. Do everything. Feel everything.”

The first day I entered the Residence Hall and I was greeted, a bit too warmly, by my future classmates and dorm parents. I was expecting a day of tiresome unloading of luggages, so the amount of interaction I was almost tricked into having with people seemed surprising. I met my roommate, his friends, and some students from China. When I went to bed that first night, I had faith in myself: this community welcomes me, so I will give my all to this community too.

A more detailed tour of the Residence Hall on the second day, and I checked my box of “see everything”. I saw the beautiful showers encased in two wooden doors, the big blue sofas in the common lounge, and my greatest discovery: the billiards table on the fifth floor (yes, I will spend a lot of time there). This curiosity to see everything continued on as I started the school year: I want to see the NFL. I want to see DC United play. Even in the classroom, I wanted to see if my teacher would offer me a better explanation after class. I got to know a lot of them better by doing so.

“Do everything” was a privilege of being a freshman. Always reluctant to answer my Chinese relatives’ question of “what do you want to do in the future”, I wanted my first year at Prep to be a year of exploration. The clubs at Prep proved my worthy battlefield to do so: I joined The Little Hoya Newspaper club and wrote one article for fun; I partook in a two-month long game of politics and back-stabbing in the ‘Diplomacy Society’; I joined the fall play as a British miner; I took advantage of Prep’s gym and worked my way to benching 150 lbs; yesterday, I fenced Zorro-style, I built a chariot for Classics club like Achilles, and I am constructed a model rocket in the engineering room. Workout, play a sport, play a video game, eat new food. The world stops when we put our abled bodies to involuntary captivity. Our cells are pumping and metabolizing every millisecond, what a shame if we do not try to do everything?
 
I think my biggest take away from this year has to be “feel everything”. Compared to the previous two checkboxes, this one seems less desirable. Why would I want to feel stress, or sadness, or disappointment, or anger? I am no stoicist or masochist who finds purpose in a deliberate act of feeling poorly or sensing pain. However, when inevitably these conjectures creep into my mind, I have learned to welcome them to my feast of life. Just like Jesus says, “Come to the table of plenty, where saints and sinners are friends.” My time at Prep has given me the ability to open my arms and ears for bad moods and bad days. If I feel disappointment about my grades, which everyone will feel at one point, I will redirect that disappointment towards hard work. When I feel homesick, I take some time to think about my family, and the great time I will have with them when I return for the holidays. Charlie Chaplin says, “Life is a tragedy at close, and a comedy from far.” The countless days of dressing up for school at Prep and the countless nights of sleeping alone in the dorm is not without many undesirable moments. But at the end of the day, we are never fully human if we do not feel every part of the emotion wheel, and we will not cherish the beauty of happiness without times of “Oh shoot I’m late for class” or “awe man I thought I aced this test…”
 
I guess no adventurer wants to know what he will find before he himself finishes the trail. Living at Prep is an adventure, what fun is it to know everything about it beforehand? My only advice is as I myself have lived through: See everything, Do everything, Feel everything. Welcome to Prep.