I never ever thought that I would end up in the south for college or ever for that matter. I had always imagined myself somewhere that was familiar and comfortable. I grew up very comfortably surrounded by the beautiful and familiar changing of the seasons, from brutality hot summer to a beautiful crisp autumn. The color of the leaves became synonymous with happiness to me. In the winter I would go out and play in the snow with people who were just like me. My friend group consisted of 5 blonde girls, we called ourselves the blondies and we had become friends because of just that. That we had something in common. I went throughout my adolescence keeping this pattern in mind, when you find people that are the same as you in interests, in appearance and in life you will feel like you belong. With everything around me staying comfortably the same, I can and will forever happily say that I loved my childhood. And I cannot express how grateful I am to be able to say that. I think I started to feel different when I was in the second grade, it wasn't like anything was astronomically wrong with me, I was just the tom boy of the grade and whatever that seemed to mean I didn't have a clue, I just knew that when people looked at my long gym shorts and soccer jerseys they thought I was different. This was the first time in my life when I found friends that I viewed as “different” as I was once again searching for people who I thought I was supposed to like. I specifically remember the first time I interacted with someone who was very different from me. A boy named Ross from the south who was staying with his uncle in Massachusetts in the 7th grade. I really liked Ross, he was funny,incredibly kind and charismatic and I remember he made everyone laugh in the school play. He sometimes had a temper but I remembered that I didn't mind much because I could tell he was a good person. Before meeting Ross I believed that actions were a direct correlation to a person's goodness. That a good person did good things and a bad did bad. At lunch one day I was sitting at the table across from Ross when he abruptly got up and started choking one of my other classmates. I got up and begged for him to stop, the boy turning blue. Ross then looked at me, stopped choking the boy and ran away. That was the last time I ever saw him. I found out many years later that Ross had grown up on the streets, and that violence was the only way he knew to defend himself. Ever since that day, I have grappled with what it means to be a good person and a bad person, and I came to my own conclusion that there are not many truly bad people. Just people who can't say that they loved their childhood, or that their mom made them cookies everyday after soccer practice. In that moment I learned empathy. As I went through highschool in a very liberal and wealthy town in Massachusetts, people of opposing views were often villainized and criticized. The south was, since I was young, portrayed as a place of hate and evil idiotic people. When someone said they wanted to go to the south it was assumed that they had some sort of allterior motive, that they were hateful, or that they were just stupid. As I continued through my college search I unconsciously kept these views in mind admindly being scared to go south because of what I had heard from the people around me. But when I got the opportunity to be a part of Tulane's track and field team my mind was opened wide to this incredible university that has everything I wanted in a school. It was perfect I just had never considered it due to the fact that it was in a state that I was scared of. As a queer person, I was afraid to tell my friends that I would be going on a visit here, and many people reacted with caution and fear as I told them, “will you be safe”, “will people hate you.” After a while however, I didn't become scared in the slightest. Throughout my junior and senior year I took what I had learned throughout my life and took it into perspective. I decided that my going to the south would not only be an amazing opportunity to attend school and compete in sports, but it would also allow me to pursue what has been my main goal for my life, which is to gain empathy. I explain to myself and to my friends that, you cannot truly hate someone that you loved first. I decided I would go to New Orleans and to the south hoping to find people with differing views and opinions and to love them anyway and to hope that eventually they would love me too. Within the first week I have been more than blown away with how much I feel at home, I have never in my whole life felt more accepted and whole. I understand this may not be everyone's experience, but I am so grateful to Tulane and the people here that it has been mine. And I can genuinely say from what I have viewed so far, that I was wrong about the south. And I can't wait to see what else it has to offer.
(featured in the Tulane Review 2025)