UHPers in the (White) House! [Profs on the Town]

The following blog post was written by Benjamin Falacci, a freshman in Professor Aviv’s Origins course titled “Eudaimonia: The Art of Living.”
It was Friday afternoon, in my first semester of college. It was down the street, a short walk, it felt like no big deal. However, it was the White House. After only a month of living in Washington, DC, a group of four Honors Program students and I had the opportunity to go on a tour of the West Wing, conducted by a former GW Honors Program student. No big deal. Despite the ease and the casual conversation between our group and our tour guide Sarah Chase, a White House employee, I had to keep reminding myself that this was indeed a big deal. We strolled past portraits of the President taken throughout his administration that portrayed him holding staff’s babies, high-fiving kids in the street, and passing a basketful with some ‘co-workers’; all images that instilled a relatable connection to our country’s President. Seconds later, we passed by the President’s chief photographer in the same hallway as the situation room–again no big deal.
After years of watching White House-orientated TV series like The West Wing and House of Cards, I felt as if I knew my way around the building. Surprisingly, the Oval Office did seem smaller in person, but that realization was quickly replaced with awe when we were allowed so close to the Resolute Desk that you could distinguish President Obama’s personal photographs kept on display behind the desk.
Though a lot of adrenaline was brought on by seeing the rose garden’s colonnade, the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, the Roosevelt Room, and the Press Briefing room, the real excitement came from talking with a GW student who actually worked in all these places who had gone through experiences not unlike those of which I am going through right now, for example taking an almost identical freshman course load. Our time in the White House was more than a tour, it was an eye opening experience that shed light on the purpose of coming to DC, and optimistically it foreshadowed a bright future here, right down the street from campus.