Notes on Community Service

As you all probably have figured out by now, I love doing community service. I mean, I wouldn't even be here at Tulane if it wasn't for community service!

So, a couple weekends ago, I had the pleasure of accomponying my friend Seth to an awards dinner where he was honored by Operation Reach as a finalist for a young leader in the community award. It was a really fun meeting all sorts of people in the community who are making a big difference in the community.


I was really proud of Seth who, as chairperson of CACTUS, works hard to bring about change right here in the city!

On a similar vein, I had dinner this past weekend with CACTUS with LUCAP (the Loyola University Commuity Action Program) which is Loyola University's community service organization. A few LUCAP-ers were kind enough to host a bunch of us CACTUS-ers at their house, and we had a delicious home-cooked meal (I must steal Chad's sweet potato/corn/jalepeno soup recipe) and talked about social issues that both of our universities are trying to fight in the city. It was cool meeting with like-minded students from our neighboring university!

Anyways, I have a really busy week ahead with various midterm papers and such, but after that, it's going to be Thanksgiving! So I'm really excited!

I hope you all got your early applications in time!

Halloween

Wow. Can you believe that it's already November? I can't! It's only two and a half more weeks until Thanksgiving, and then after that it's only a couple of weeks until the end of the semester. Crazy! Where did all the time go?

Well, this past weekend was Halloween, and of course, being in New Orleans, it was a lot of fun.

One of the great opportunities that I got to participate in was Boo at the Zoo which was held at the Audubon Zoo (which is practically right across the street from campus). It was a Halloween night for families with music, food, games, and trick-or-treating. The best part? All the proceeds went to benefit the zoo and the Children's Hospital.

We (me, Maeve, and Katie, pictured below) got placed at the "Big Kid's Games" section and we were in charge of a booth where kids tried to throw ping pong balls into the haunted house that you can kind of see behind us in the picture for tickets. Also, in case you were wondering, I was dressed up as a fairy princess and Maeve was a bird...


On Halloween, I hung out with a few friends and went to a Halloween party. Below is a picture of me (dressed up as Tom Cruise from Risky Business), Holly (a cowgirl), and Seth (dressed up an matronly woman) being silly.


Anyways, that's all from my end. Big perspective weekend on Sunday. Can't wait to meet some more future Tulanians!

Celine Cousteau

Hey all,

As always, I am apologizing for not posting in a little while. I swear these things will come weekly instead of every other week. Keep me to it!

Anyways, I have some really exciting updates from here in New Orleans. I just came from a dinner reception with none other than Celine Cousteau, Jacques Cousteau's granddaughter! It was great! She was invited to come speak by the Newcomb Institute and since I was the chair of the Women in Science committee in charge of bringing a speaker to campus, we worked to set up her lecture, a nice daytime reception with a small group of undergraduates, and the dinner reception I just came from.

Celine talked to us about the importance of environment conservation, sustainability, and giving back to others since we are all part of the same human species. It was a really great lecture. And then dinner at Daisy Bistro was amazing and we got an even more intimate chat with her over some great food.

Anyways, another great opportunity provided by Tulane which I thoroughly enjoyed and had to gush about. Celine was even nice enough to take a picture with some of the girls who came to the dinner and me!

Have a great Halloween weekend everyone!

Homecoming

It's been a crazy busy week of midterms and papers to write (which explains my momentary absence) but I'm back now because it's fall break so we have a couple of days off of school which is a nice change.

So last week was homecoming week and homecoming/parents/alumni weekend! It was a great week of Tulane spirit. They had fun activities planned all week that even the rain couldn't drive away. There was the annual powderpuff game, a pep rally and a homecoming concert, featuring Augusta (picture below). Augustana was really great live and it was really great break from all the midterm madness.


I also got to participate in a parents/alumni community service project on Friday as part of homecoming. We worked with Project Greenlight and had some parent and alumni volunteers come help out as well changing lightbulbs in the Hollygrove neighborhood to more energy efficient ones.

Then on Saturday was the homecoming game and a bunch of fun tailgating. Like all of our other football game, we headed over to the Superdome. There were a bunch of different tents set up from the various fraternities and sororities, Tulane's various schools (the Tulane-Newcomb Undergraduate college had really great jambalaya), and various alumni reunions. Below is a picture of Megan, Amanda, and I venturing over on the busses.


Anyways, even though we didn't win the game, it was a really fun week and weekend. We also had a campus preview day that Sunday and I got to meet some prospective students! Good luck with applications, y'all!

My 20th Birthday

Hey all!

It's been a really busy couple of weeks (which is why I haven't posted for a little bit), but here's my update on everything I've been up to at Tulane.

I've had so much schoolwork to get done. And on top of that, I had some CACTUS stuff to get done (more on that in my next post) and then some Women in Science things as well.

Anyways, it was my 20th birthday last Friday, and so I thought I would share some pictures from that. We went to La Thai, possibly one of my favorite restaurants in the city, for dinner. It was delicious. Then, we went back to my apartment and had some birthday cake, baked by the two best friends/roommates a girl could ask for (Amanda and Arielle). It was a great birthday!

Also, it was the first big prospective student weekend this past weekend, and I got to meet some really cool prospective students on the tour I gave. Hopefully I'll get to see you around campus this year as you preview our school!If you've already submitted an application, good luck!

September-ness

Hey all!

I feel like I am constantly apologizing for not posting in a while, but once again, I'm sorry for not having posted in a couple of weeks.

Let's see. What's been up? Well, I've just had a lot of schoolwork to do. It's amazing how much reading I've had to do since school has started. I guess I've never really taken a semester full of liberal arts classes, and for the first time in my college career I have papers to write every week and lots of pages to get through every night. But it's okay. As least I find the topics interesting.

One really cool class I'm taking is this persuasive writing class with Professor Joseph Letter. We spend most of class in discussion and Professor Letter is a really great lecturer. One really cool thing is that since the class is about how to apply ancient rhetoric to the modern day, we can use sources such as Youtube and Wikipedia. It's great!

Also, I've been doing a lot of stuff for CACTUS which is always really fun. And when I get the chance, I hang out with those crazy people I call my friends. Example:

My roommates, Amanda and Arielle, and I holding up our friend David in our living room? I honestly couldn't tell you why we thought this was a great idea for a picture... Haha.

Oh! Actually, I gave my first couple of tours for the new year last week. They were really fun. I love meeting new prospective students!

Anyways, that's all from my end. I'll be better with posting from now on. Actually, my twentieth birthday is next week, so hopefully I'll have some pictures from that up! Hope to see you around campus!

Outreach Tulane

Hey all!

I've been so swamped with first week work, that it's been a little hard trying to find time to update, but here goes. I am loving all of my classes so far; they're all pretty interesting. And! Not having Friday classes is probably one of the best life decisions I have ever made.

One of the things that I have been super busy with for the past few weeks has been helping with Outreach Tulane. For those of you who don't know, Outreach Tulane is the big campus-wide community service day that CACTUS (the Community Action Council of Tulane University Students) and the Center for Public Service (and various other organizations on campus) put on every year the Saturday after move-in. Basically, it's about a thousand volunteers who help out at various sites around the city. Now can you see why I haven't had time to update?

The day turned out really great, actually. We had a great turnout (even though everyone had to be unreasonably early for college students on a Saturday), and we did some great work in the community. One great (Project Greenlight) installed energy efficient lightbulbs in houses. One group cleaned up cemetaries (Save our Cemetaries).

My group actually got to help out with the Community Health Fair and Play Day by playing with kids whose parents came to get health screenings from the Tulane community health bus. This was all part of a bigger day that was the 4th Commemoration of Hurricane Katrina, and it was great to see Tulane students be able to be part of the New Orleans community. Actually, it was just great to see the community come together as a whole to commemorate the 4th anniversary, to mourn the losses, and to celebrate what has been regained.

Anyways, I don't have pictures from the day of yet (yeah... sorry... I suck), but I promise pictures as the semester progresses!