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.

Why I do Community Servce (and why you should too)

I love the community service work I do (which is why I write about it so much on this blog). Last weekend was CACTUS Annual Field Day Event and the first Community Service Semi-Formal, and both reminded me of why I do community service and how much I will miss the service community here at Tulane. So here is my list of top three reasons I do community service and why you should too.

Because you're helping out your community. What more of a reason could you want than that, right? The people in your community are the people that you interact with on a regular basis. Even if you don't realize it, their lives affect yours.

For me, I just want to make sure that the people around me are having the best quality of life that they could have. And Field Day was a great example of that. We had about 200 elementary school kids running around Bruff quad with various activities set up for them to do, and they seemed to having the time of their lives. One kid even told one of our volunteers that he "was definitely going to come to Tulane because we had so much fun here." (No one had the heart to tell him we didn't jump around on bounce houses most days)

Face painting was a big hit at Field Day.

Hula-hooping was also quite popular.

Because you meet the best people. Some of my closest friends I have met through my community service work. One of my good friends, Seth, always tells the story of how he actually started doing community service because he wanted to meet girls as a freshman. I don't really know how well that panned out for him, but I think he would agree with me in saying that community service is a great way to meet great people

Adam and Lea are two people I probably wouldn't have met if not for service work. This is us all dressed up for the semi-formal.

Because it's fun and rewarding at the same time. So if you're not sold on helping the community and meeting great people, then let me assure you that community service is great because it's fun as well as personally rewarding. It's fun because you can always find a form of service that meets your likes and interests. If you like animals, consider volunteering at an animal shelter. If you like kids like I do, maybe something like Field Day is your thing. It's also rewarding because you always leave at the end of the day knowing that you have done something to help someone else. And even Scrooge would attest to how good lending a hand to someone else is good for the soul.

Mike L. having fun playing football with the kids at Field Day

Cooper making a new friend while making fruit loop necklaces

Mike E. offering an origami flower to his new friend

Anyways, that's my pitch. Hopefully, I was able to convince you some. Bottom line: if you aren't already doing service, you should get out there and try it out. If you already are, keep on volunteering.

Crawfesting

Who doesn't love Crawfest?

Crawfest is a purely Tulane tradition that happens every year in April, and it's probably one of my favorite days of the spring semester. It's great! There are two stages set up on either side of the LBC quad with bands playing from 11am to 9pm including Trombone Shorty and The Revivalists (who were my favorite of the day).

The crowd of Crawfest revelers in front of the McAlister Stage

We brought out our blankets and towels, spread them out on the quad, and ate a bunch of free crawfish for the entire afternoon.

Everyone ate crawfish except Amanda who is actually afraid of them. Hah.

Holly showing off her muscles and Crawfest tattoo.

It was a lot of fun, and aside from being a little sunburnt, I had a great day! Hopefully I'll be in New Orleans this next year so that this won't be my last Crawfest...

It also happened that last week was also National Volunteering Week, and Tulane had a bunch of events for that, so I'll put up a post and pictures of that soon. Until then!

Spring Break

So I've been back at school for a week now (and what a crazy hectic week it's been), and I've been meaning to post about Spring Break, but it's taken this long for Bryan to put up the pictures from it that I wasn't able to. (Yeah, Bryan, totally blaming this one on you)

Anyways, he finally put the pictures up last night, so here's a blog in pictorial form detailing out trip. Enjoy!

What can I say that it was really fun. Especially to take a break from all the school work. But now I'm back at school with a lot to do once again (the end of the semester can get kind of hectic). But! I have so much to look forward to in the coming weeks.

Well, first of all the weather is absolutely beautiful. Like beautiful. Then this weekend, there's CACTUS's Field Day on Friday as well as the Community Service Council's Semi Formal (don't worry, there will be pictures galore from this) and then Crawfest on Saturday (also lots of pictures from this as well).

Anyways, glad to be back. Graduation in a little over a month. Eep!

Sam's birthday

This past Sunday was my friend Sam's birthday. So, of course, I took a short break from all the work I had to do and went out to celebrate. And what were a bunch of college students going to go do when their good friend turns 22? Why, go play laser tag of course. (Yes. We're that cool.)

Sam, Seth, Amanda, and I all headed over to Elmwood where there have a laser tag arena and ran around trying to shoot down some nine-year-olds and each other. Don't we look super awesome?

On top of that, the laser tag place also had arcade games, bumper cars, and a mini-golf course. We didn't get to play mini-golf, but we did go a couple of rounds on the bumper cars and played lots of arcade games (we wanted 6000 tickets to get the giants stuffed animal tiger, but that was a no go)

Seth, Skee-Ball champion (that's actually not true... Amanda kicked his butt)

Sam and Amanda in their bumper cars

Basically, it was a blast. And Sam had an awesome birthday, I think. I mean, we combined all the tickets we won (a grand total of 44) and traded them in for a spiffy string bracelet and a toy soldier. What more could you want?

Those people I call my friends

Anyways, I finally finished all my pre-Spring Break work that I needed to get done. And now I can't wait for Spring Break! Don't know if I've mentioned my plans, but I'm headed up north to Pittsburgh and then Chicago for the week (I know, most kids flock to the beach but whatever)

Super excited.

Spring things

In my time at Tulane, I've always thought that there is no more beautiful time or place than springtime in New Orleans. Although the workload is getting a little rough, the weather is beautiful and campus is bustling with activity.

Anyways, last weekend, Amanda, Holly, Maeve and I had a sleepover! The idea was formulated one evening because Holly got a care package from her mom containing "No pudge" brownie mix and of course, we had to have the girliest sleepover to eat it, right? Well, we all got together, and stayed in, ate lots of food, watched Love Actually, and had a lot of fun.

Drinking milkshakes out of coffee mugs

What was left of the food. All in all, we had stuffed jalapenos, potato skins, a spinach and mushroom pizza, mozzarella sticks, and Holly's brownies with ice cream. Yum.
We laid out our mattresses side to side in our living room. This is Holly and Maeve spread out, enjoying the bedding.

Then this week was really stressful with papers and such, but then we took a break for St. Patrick's day. I've never been too big on St. Patrick's day, but we still went out with some friends.

All dressed up in green.

And spring break is coming up in exactly a week! I'll be going to Pittsburgh and then Chicago. I'm so excited about spring time!