The people at Tulane taught me how to be happy again

As I pack up my boxes to head home after my first year of college, I shake my head because the task before me seems insurmountable. I came to Tulane with a lot of t-shirts, yes, but since starting my freshman year, my collection has grown exponentially.

T-shirts are one of the few tangible things Tulane gave me. I wear them, boasting all the new teams I’ve found: Tulane University, Tulane Sports, This Club, That Club, This Sorority, That Event. I’m proud to wear my Tulane logos, because getting here wasn’t so easy.

Coming to Tulane for me meant coming to school with a demobilizing concussion, and a pang of sadness which came along with it, but learning how to find happiness despite the headache. The headaches keep me in bed sometimes still, but the sadness evaporated like steam off of hot, wet pavement. That is something intangible that Tulane has given to me: I found my happiness again.

I got my concussion February of my senior year, the result of a soccer accident and a car accident which followed shortly after. Headaches meant modified school days, modified workload, modified extracurriculars, modified sleep schedule. I only made it through one full day of school after my concussion senior year. I slept a lot and simultaneously wasn’t able to sleep.

My concussion didn’t only affect my memory, my balance, and my focus but also the chemicals in my brain, sending me into a downwards spiral of depression and anxiety. I am not a sad person, and I have never felt so unlike myself as I did that summer after my senior year.

Leaving home and going off to Tulane meant I had an opportunity to shed my sadness, but I didn’t even know that’s what I was doing until I heard myself laugh again. It was a loud and crackling belly laugh, the kind that startles everyone else, like, “Where did that come from?” It startled me when I heard it. I heard it and realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I had heard my own laughter, and I don’t know if this realization or the loudness of my laugh was more startling.

A genuine smile, with a girl who I didn’t know would become my rock

When I came to Tulane I was afraid of the dark and sleeping alone, so my best friend put a mattress on her floor. I was afraid to hit my head, so my soccer coach threw me a neon penny and deemed me untouchable, adding that any ball kicked above shoulder height by one of my teammates was punishable by push-ups.

Here I could do what I loved again. I was held up by the people that just a month before were strangers to me.

I am emboldened by the brave hearts who surround me: one friend’s relentless desire to pursue computer science despite the whimpering program, another friend’s persistence to skateboard despite his bruising elbows, my hallmate’s buzz cut, the sexual assault survivors who teach about consent, the boys who live above me and like to play football in the rain, and the Vegan girls who shove “Meet Kevin the Chicken” pamphlets into my hand multiple times in my walk down McAlister (I’m sorry Kevin, my vegetarianism only lasted four months, as I am a true chicken-nugget-lover).

My friend and his band, showing us what real New Orleans sounds like

I found mentors and fellow explorers here. I made a best friend out of a host student — who knew it wouldn’t be a freshman, but a junior who would be my first friend here? The people I greeted outside multiplied with each passing day. While there’s no way they all knew my name, they were friendly faces and so was I. We were from the North and the South, big families and small, different religions, political parties, and economic backgrounds.

Our t-shirts sported different team colors and different brands. In ways we were strange to each other for a while, but here I am now, breaking at the idea of the handful of seniors, who I only knew for less than a year, graduating.

Through all my encounters with these people, I have grown at Tulane. They chip away at my shell and my preconceived notions of what I am capable of.

Because of these people, I have become truly joyful here. Something about the air in New Orleans fills me up. It’s the people I’ve bumped into who have somehow slipped under my skin and made a home out of my heart. It is the way the rain comes down so often to pool in my rainboots and soak straight through to my core. Sometimes here, it feels like I am made of water, and I don’t have to worry about holding myself up so straight — I can just fall into whatever shape I land.

And despite the fact that Tulane has failed to provide me with all the answers I’m looking for, like exactly what to study and where to go in the world, I like it here. Because being here has taught me that there is more to problem solving than just answers.

In International Development the answers are never “I don’t know.” They are “here’s what I know; let’s work together to decide from there.” And while most of the time I still don’t know, I’m growing patient. And I’m growing more resilient in my search.

I am not discouraged here, I am emboldened.

The team who tried their best to avoid hitting me in the head

Mom, Dad, and Joe teaching me how to do Crawfest right

Here I have broken down and rebuilt myself many times, sometimes purposefully and other times inadvertently. It is the breaking and rebuilding that makes my body feel stronger than before. I know that the air here is always enough to reinflate my lungs, and the aftertaste of rain is enough to keep my senses tingling. Here, at Tulane, I have a home away from home.

Here there is ample space to collect t-shirts, here there is ample space to collect joy.