Welcome to Tulane (and Hurricane Isaac)

Guest blogger: Samantha Becker

Welcome Week is the week everyone looks forward to all summer long. It is the first week of freshman year, and the excitement is flowing as student after student is moved in and gets ready to embark on the best four years of their life.

My start in school was a little different. Move-in day went as planned, I moved into Butler Hall, the Honors dorm. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t too excited to live in Butler at first; after all, it is the Honors dorm and that comes with assumptions about the people who live there. However, a week later I would be proud to call Butler my home for the next 9 months.

The day after move-in came the warning of the hurricane. Most didn’t think too much of it, it would most-likely blow over. The parents that were still in town were worried, but mine were well on their way home to California. All of a sudden, in the next few hours people started to become more worried as more and more warnings were sent out.

Nonetheless, we had our first day of classes Monday, although students who had gone home were told they would not be punished. Jump forward a few hours, and we were getting word that there would be a lock-in until further notice, effective Monday evening. That afternoon my roommate and I ran to the local rite-aid, hoping to stock up on snacks for what would turn into the best 48 hours of freshman year.

While Hurricane Isaac knocked down trees and power lines all over the city, we were safe in Butler. Yes, we had to sleep in the hallway that first night. But the hurricane from the inside was not as scary as it was from the outside. Our parents were frantic, while we happily watched National Treasure and Anchorman with people piled in the lounge and in the doorway. That is, until we lost power. And then we made our own fun; we had a dance party with portable speakers that ran on batteries and played random games. As laptops and phones died, we had to rely on the connections we were making with one another. I can’t tell you how many people I met during those 48 hours. We even had a giant jam session in my room that lasted two hours. It included a saxophone, ukulele, guitar, and drums made out of my calculus textbook. We were hot and the building was full of humidity, but the “nerdy honors” kids in Butler found ways to make fun.

That being said, when the power came on a few days later and we were let out, the feeling was bittersweet. We were sad that our bonding experience was over, that we would again be separated by cellphones and laptops and busy class schedules, but happy that we had amazing memories to look back on. I will never forget the memories Hurricane Isaac gave me, or the friends it led me to make, friends that I still have to this day. I am so happy I got put in Butler. The lock-in allowed me to give the dorm and the people a chance, and I will be forever grateful. I say to this day when I give tours that it doesn’t matter what dorm you are in, what matters are the connections you make with the people in it.

Thanks to the hurricane, it was the most untraditional Welcome Week any school could ever have, and while basically all of the official activities were cancelled, I don’t feel like I missed out. I feel like I had the best Welcome Week I could have asked for. As we say, only at Tulane, only in New Orleans. Thanks for the great welcome Isaac.

The NOLA Experience: 5 days of your Freshman year that you DON'T want to miss!

Guest blogger: Ali Bloomston

Sometimes I wonder where I would be now if it were not for the NOLA Experience Orientation program. Would I have still met the people I consider my best friends? Would I be as involved on campus as I am now? Would I have felt as adjusted to Tulane and New Orleans? All I know is that participating in something as incredible as the NOLA Experience has completely shaped my undergraduate career at Tulane.

How can 5 days be so impactful? While NOLA is an orientation program, it is nothing like June orientation where the focus of the program is to properly acclimate students to beginning college and different services offered by Tulane. NOLA Experience is about acclimating students to the city of New Orleans, and fostering a passion for the city that is as important to the Tulane experience as what is learned in the classroom.

Through the NOLA Experience, rising freshman are assigned to "tracks" based on their interests. Each "track" presents a unique lens in which to view aspects of life in New Orleans. Tracks range from perspectives such as food, sports, music, community service, and nature--just to name a few. My freshman year I participated in a track called "Let the Good Times Rock and Roll" which focused on music in the Big Easy.

As a participant, I ate at some of the most incredible restaurants around the city, heard a plethora of locally renowned musicians, and toured famous music venues. While some of the activities during NOLA Experience are track specific, others are with all of the tracks combined. My favorite "All NOLA" activity was Cajun Dinner and Dancing at Michaul's Restaurant, where we loaded up on red beans and rice and bread pudding and danced the night away to Zydeco music. Something else that I really love about that NOLA Experience is that each track has a community service day, which I think is a wonderful reminder that as Tulane students it is important to constantly give back to the city that gives us so much.

Probably my favorite aspect of the NOLA Experience is the people you meet. I can honestly say that more than half of my closest friends at Tulane I met during NOLA. A major perk of participating in this program a few days before school starts was that NOLA participants had such an advantage over students who move in for Welcome Week--we already had a strong support base and a feel for Tulane and the city. The bond that I formed with the other participants on my tracks still continues years later. Two of the girls on my track are my sorority sisters. I am about to room with a girl on my track for the second year in a row. Three guys in my track joined the same fraternity together. Two guys on my track joined the frisbee team together. Another two guys on my track become leaders in an organization called Roots of Music, which they found out about through our track programming. Two participants on my track dated for an entire year. Outside of my track, three other NOLA participants became my best friends at Tulane. NOLA Experience participants became student government senators, campus tour guides, student newspaper journalists, campus programming representatives, community service organization leaders, and 16 of us even became NOLA Experience Coordinators.

In addition to making lasting friendships with their peers, participants in the NOLA Experience also develop a powerful relationship with their Orientation Coordinators (OCs), upperclassmen who went through the NOLA Experience that are assigned to a specific track and organize programming and act as a mentor throughout and beyond NOLA. My NOLA OCs were two of the coolest people ever and made sure we knew all the ins-and-outs of Tulane. They constantly checked up on us throughout our freshman year and organized reunions so we could all get together and catch up. As a participant I knew how much having an upperclassmen mentor benefitted me, but it wasn't until I became an OC myself that I realized I got as much out of the relationship as participants did. My sophomore year I was the OC for a track called "Changemakers," a track that focused on social entrepreneurship in New Orleans, and I was surprised that even as an OC I became such good friends with so many of my participants. There is something about the NOLA Experience, as cheesy as it sounds, that truly brings people together.

This upcoming year I am an OC for the track "Street, Stage, and Screen" which is all about performing arts in New Orleans. I am so lucky to be able to be involved in the NOLA Experience for a third time! As a campus tour guide, I always tell my tour groups how much the NOLA Experience has jumpstarted  my Tulane career and how important it is for committed Tulane students to consider participating. So if you are looking to make amazing friends before school even starts and learn about the incredible city you will spend the next 4 years of your life in, NOLA Experience is the program for you.

Katie Cleghorn, a new Tulanian

The first thing you should know is that I am an incredibly awkward person. 

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I shall continue with my introduction. 

My name is Katie. Okay, all right, it's technically Savannah but, as much as I love my parents, their decision to name me after Jimmy Buffett's daughter isn't one I'm particularly proud of. I am a high school senior (less than two months until graduation!) and, as of about a month ago, I will be attending Tulane next year. 

My vert best friend

So, I'm a huge nerd. I'm just going to put that out there right now. I skipped eighth grade and so I'll be barely seventeen when I start school next fall. I am planning on double-majoring in political science and neuroscience and, being as geeky as I am, I've already picked out which classes I'm going to take next semester. I'm also really into biographies and stuff of the like, so I'm thinking about minoring in history. I'm mildly obsessed with Harry Potter and England. I'm actually going to London for the first time this summer. I'm really into YouTube and will be going to VidCon in Anaheim this summer. I'm also a musician and I've opened for a bunch of really great musicians, although I'm not sure how exactly that happened.

This is me playing last February after Billy Currington!  

While in high school (okay, I'm still technically IN high school but a girl can pretend), I changed schools five times. Yeah, I know. That's a lot. For the most part it wasn't my choice. The homeschool I went to freshman year kind of fell apart and my family and I moved back to Nashville after my sophomore year. The other changes were purely me, though. (Just for future reference, don't agree to go to boarding school unless you're absolutely sure.) Because I changed schools so often, I never really got involved in school activities. When I get to Tulane, I'll probably go insane with all of the choices. I really want to join a sorority (for some reason unbeknownst to me) and the student government. I'm also up for any Harry Potter clubs or club sports. I find the Hullabaloo really interesting, too. (I realize that kind of rhymed. It was not meant to.) If you couldn't tell, I'm ridiculously excited for this fall. 

Okay, so that's me. I'm going to end it here before it gets too unbearably awkward. Thanks for listening! Or reading, I guess…

Orientation Experience

Guest blogger: Darryl Farley

Student orientation is one of the most important parts of getting acclimated to the college experience.  Coming from high school you have no idea how the college life is going to be.  In most cases, the experience is not quite like they are portrayed in movies. Having student orientation gives you a better idea of how college really is. In the student orientation you meet other incoming freshmen and a couple of upperclassmen that share their experiences. The orientation staff shows you around the campus, explaining the history of the different buildings and facilities along with the opportunities that the school has to offer. The orientation also welcomes parents to tour the campus and see the place their children will consider their new home for the next four years.

Once you get to the student orientation you will have a lot of feelings and emotions running through your body:  excitement, nervous, freedom and etc. You will be concerned about how you will make friend, but stuck on the fact that you will be leaving home, becoming independent. There is no need to worry about making friends because the student orientation designs ice breaker games to get everybody talking. The students and orientation coordinator gets in a big circle and go around telling their name, where they are from, and what they plan on majoring in. Students realize they have something in common with the other students and they began to talk amongst one another. This game really works because the same people I met in orientation are some of my closest friends today.

                  The student orientation takes you around to freshmen dorms and you are able to see where you will be staying for the school year. They also take you around to the different schools at Tulane such as the A.B. Freeman School of Business, School of Liberal Arts, etc. This give you an idea of where you will be taking majority of your classes and so you won’t be looking lost on the first day of class.

                                                     

                  Take advantage of your orientation experience because it will be something you will never forget. The friends you meet at orientation will be your friends for a lifetime. The education you receive at Tulane will also stick with you for a lifetime.