The End

I know it's been a while since I've posted, but with finals and graduation and moving, it's been just a little hectic in my life, but here I am posting what will be my last blog post about life as a Tulane undergraduate.

Graduation was so much fun. I can't even tell you how great I thought it was. Tulane can really throw a party, that's for sure. There were a bunch of award ceremonies on Friday as well as Wave Goodbye (a goodbye quad party for graduates and their families) and then on Saturday was the main event. My family as well as Bryan flew in to be there for the big day. Below are some pictures from the day.

The scene is set before the graduates walk in. The unified school ceremony and the undergraduate ceremony were both held in the Superdome.
My cousin took this picture of all the graduates and the stage on the floor of the Superdome (I think this was right after they dropped Tulane beach balls on us!)

Scott Cowen (Tulane's president) with our commencement speaker Anderson Cooper. Anderson doesn't know this yet, but he and I are getting married.

Celebrating!

Showing off our diplomas

It was all very bittersweet. Fun and exciting and happy, yet really sad at the same time. These were some of the best years of my life and these are some of the best people I know, and it was hard having to close that chapter of my life. I know I will definitely keep being friends with the people I've met (I already have plans to visit New Orleans as well as various other places around the US to see friends) but still, nothing will compare to my time at Tulane.

What's next for me? Well, I'm planning to move to DC next week for hopefully a year (still waiting to hear back from an Americorps program) and then, unless something drastically changes, graduate school the year after.

Thank you everyone who's kept up with this blog for the past year and a half. It's been fun writing it. For all of you who are coming to Tulane in the fall, good luck and enjoy. They will be some of the greatest four years!

Cheers!

Tchoup Challenge

At the very top of my list of things to do before I graduate, there stood one challenge that I had yet to do. It's name: Tchoupitoulas.

What is the Tchoupitoulas challenge you ask? At Creole Creamery, a local ice cream parlor with some unique, in-store made treats, they have a massive eating challenge that consists of...

... 8 scoops of ice cream
....8 toppings
.... whipped cream
.... rainbow sprinkles
.... and 8 cherries

If you are able to finish, your name is immortalized on a plaque on their wall and on their website. So, of course, last Saturday while taking a study break from finals, Amanda and Arielle accompanied me as I took up the call to action.

I ended up picking 8 scoops of Cookie Monster (a combination of cookies'n'cream ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough) with 2 helpings of chocolate syrup, chocolate chips, bananas, 2 helpings of oreos, and 2 helpings of chip ahoy cookies. My thinking was that I would have enough crunchiness to sustain the liquid of the ice cream and that I wanted to eat something I would enjoy. Thus, the challenge began. Don't I look so confident and happy?

Little did I know what I was in for...

Fifteen minutes in, I was feeling confident.... I was almost half way done, and things were looking good.

15 minutes in.

And I kept eating...

And then things went downhill from there. At about 30 minutes I began to lose steam. The ice cream all melted, and the problem was not that I was full, it was that it became too sweet and I was getting sick.45 minutes in.

So, alas, after a valiant effort, I gave up after 61 minutes (Amanda was timing me) with about 1/3 of the ice cream left. You win this time, Tchoupitoulas Challenge. You win.