When not busy walking around the lakes in the dead of winter, senior John Gibbons juggles a few different hats on campus. He serves as a FYS adviser, studies international development, travels to China and India for study and research, and is the guy who stays after the party to help you clean up. Seriously, he’s that guy. John is most often found on those comfortable yet visually abrasive orange-and-plaid couches in the lobby of the library spitting jokes and distracting you from studying while working faster than you.
Name: John Gibbons
Hometown: Western Springs, Illinois
Major: Political Science and Chinese
Major you wish you chose: Political Science, Chinese, Arabic, Literature, Anthropology, and Entrepreneurship
Dorm allegiance: Duncan Hall
1. Why do you think you’re being interviewed?
Confident answer: Because I am in the same league as the other people you have interviewed.
Real answer: Because HCND’s process of vetting their interview candidates is faulty, the 20 dollars I slipped you was enough of a bribe, or someone thought that it would be good to interview me and see how quickly I put my foot in my mouth.
2. Who are you?
I am like a Bacchus butterfly stuck forever in my chrysalis. I am a person who likes aphorisms, but enjoys being overly verbose even more. Someone who likes to try to fit bigger words in amongst the slang and cussing that almost automatically come out. My religion is based on long walks, longer talks, Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway, Childish Gambino, strange movies, and caprice. I am John Gibbons.
3. Favorite Domer dead, alive, or fictional?
Jed Bartlet. He was the best president our country has ever had. It is true, he made some controversial decisions, like allowing the government shutdown and assassinating Abdul Shareef, but dammit, he got results.
4. Who would you nominate as an honorary Domer?
Probably Jacqueline Novogratz. I got to see her talk, and she is extremely impressive. Also, it would be nice to have her in the ND Alumni Mafia for some post-grad networking opportunities.
5. Post-grad plans?
Something along the lines of international social entrepreneurship and gender equality, Yeezus willing.
6. What’s your cause?
Gender equality, especially in the context of international development.
7. Highlight of your college career to date?
Getting interviewed by Her Campus or being called gregarious. Next would be all of the amazing individuals I have met and talked with during my time at ND. After that, learning how to whistle, which happened two weeks ago.
8. In 25 years, you will be:
Abroad and on my grind.
9. What did you think you were going to do freshman year and why?
Probably go to some classes, learn some stuff, be all I could be, win the hearts and minds of my peers. That or sit on the quad with a group of photogenic students and a distinguished looking professor talking about the world and solving problems. Why? Because I bought into the brochures pretty heavily.
10. If you could change one thing about ND what would it be?
Single sex dorms and all of their trappings. I think they make for very stilted gender relations freshman year, dividing our school in a rigid line between guys and gals and making it harder to find friends across the gap. It is still possible, and I feel like (or hope that) most people have done it, but I think that more time is wasted as a result.
11. Favorite class you’ve taken?
Multi-Cultural China. We read a variety of authors drawing throughout the various ethnicities within China and Taiwan. When I told my professor I enjoyed the readings we had for class, she gave me a bag of books. Just a bag of books without any requirement to return them. A bag of new books that were mine to keep. Forever. I still salivate when thinking about that moment.
12. Worst?
Calculus 2. It destroyed me mentally, physically and emotionally. It was a humbling, humiliating experience with very little payoff or lessons learned.
13. Bedtime?
It varies to an annoying amount.
14. Favorite spot on campus?
Probably somewhere around the lakes. I really like walking around them, so I don’t have a particular spot in mind, but the scenery overall.
15. Biggest fear?
That I will fall flat on my face when chasing my dreams, that I’m done growing, that fundamentalism is a growing trend, that I’ll be too late; all of the usual suspects and some fresh ones.
16. Guilty pleasure?
We Can’t Stop. There is something about Miley’s casual work in popularizing drugs that appeals to me. Plus, Mike Will Made It. So it’s got that going for it, which is nice.
17. What’s your drink?
Chocolate milk. I had to have someone tell me that it would be socially inappropriate to buy a half-gallon of it and bring it to the library. So instead, I bought two quarter-gallons and drank them in rapid succession. After that, a Manhattan, cause it’s what my granddaddy drank.
18. Favorite book?
I can’t answer this. I know I have been cheating on all of these responses already by giving much more than the one answer you were looking for, but this one would be flagrant.
19. Favorite decorative possession?
Probably my Chinese propaganda posters or the pages I cut out of a Chinese art magazine. I can’t understand either of them, so I always have to make up new translations for whenever someone asks me to read what they say.
20. If you could give one verb of advice for current students what would it be?
Travel. Notre Dame has a lot of money available for research, study, other such activities, but you can get that money and run with it. So run out of the country. See a little bit of a lot, always with the intention of going back.
21. What makes someone a Domer?
I am not sure. I’d say the belief that we are a unique breed of college graduates who experienced four years of magic that no one else will ever understand (which I 100% buy into). Or possibly that every Domer is a Jill or Jack of all trades. There are no one trick ponies at this school, but a lot of multi-faceted chargers (the horse, not the team, though I suppose you could have a team of chargers as well). That and the passion every person seems to have about at least one subject. It is always inspiring to hear someone talk intensely about what they love most.
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