Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

NEWSLETTER
Sign up for our twice-weekly newsletter!

Josh Akman: Writing my GW memoir

I’m fairly jealous of departing Hatchet editors, and how they get to write cool memoir-type final pieces. I’ve only met a couple of these editors, but reading their goodbye notes makes me almost as sentimental as when I Youtube Harry Kalas’ call of the Phillies winning the 2008 World Series which, for clarity’s sake, I often do.

So, as a departing senior who has written columns for three years, I’d like to do a last piece, too. But the problem is, the life of a columnist is nowhere near as exciting as that of an editor. So my goodbye is a goodbye to GW.

Goodbye to the Vern: In my four years at GW, I’ve been to the Vern about five times. After each visit there, the first thing I would do upon my return to civilization is remove the phone number from my contacts list of the person who made me go in the first place. They were no longer someone I wanted to be friends with. Going to the Vern is like studying abroad in Iowa. Let’s move graduate students there, they’re old and boring anyway. It can be like GW’s own retirement community.

Goodbye to the GWorld office: They should change the name of the GWorld Card Office to Akman Hall, as I literally keep the place in business. It makes a lot of sense that each 3-inch-wide piece of plastic they replace costs you $35. No, wait, it doesn’t.

Goodbye to J Street: I’ll miss the Wendy’s cashier lady yelling “Cash or GWorld!,” so quickly that it sounds like one terrifying word. Though I may or may not have offered my credit card a couple of times each semester just so she’d yell it. During my sophomore year, I was at J Street and got a sandwich (super expensive), a cup of vegetables (laughably expensive), and some candy (over-the-top expensive) and when I asked for a cup for water, the guy at the register charged me 35 cents. I’ve never hated anyone as much as I hated that man.

Goodbye to the GW Bookstore: My first column was devoted to how awful the bookstore was, so I won’t use this space to pile on. Just kidding. The bookstore is to books what the DMV is to cars. Even if the bookstore hired Enron to do its accounting and George W. Bush to be its CEO, it would be better than eFollett. The people are mean, the line is confusing and it’s pretty much the saddest place on Earth.

Goodbye to the Student Association: I get it, you guys want to be congressmen some day. But all you do during meetings is argue, talk about things that don’t matter and give speeches just to hear yourself talk. Hmm. actually, you’ll be great congressmen.

Goodbye to The Hatchet. Thanks for not blocking my e-mail when I sent super-offensive column ideas and instead just wrote back “no.” The people I’ve met through The Hatchet (especially Justin and Lyndsey) are smarter than me, funnier than me, cooler than me, and more attractive than me. Having my name next to theirs in the paper is very, very cool.

The writer, a senior majoring in criminal justice, is a Hatchet columnist.

Readers can visit the Forum to comment on this column.

More to Discover
Donate to The GW Hatchet