Shalom to all! I know, I know I haven't posted in a while so hopefully this post makes up for it. I just finished up my first week at Tulane and it's certainly been memorable.
There's an expression that life is like a roller coaster or something like that and that could not be more true, especially about my first week. There have been a lot of ups and downs and there were times that my downs were a lot lower than my highs were high. Being a little person, I feel like it's a lot harder to fit in socially into an average sized world. People can literally talk above me and not even realize I'm there. I know that I don't particularly look like a college freshmen and others do too so it feels like they don't treat me as one. Now I know a lot of this is most likely in my head but it's what I've felt throughout the past week. Thanks to help from my family (sorry for all the late night calls) I've been able to persevere and make the start of my Tulane experience a success.
I probably have one of the worst freshmen schedules ever seen, all 8 AMs, but that's okay considering football starts bright and early at 6:30. My classes are interesting, a lot of reading though (I actually should be doing that right now but clearly I'm sidetracked. But Mom I am reading and doing my work I swear). After class I usually get lunch: my go to lunch is edamame, a kashi bar and a fruit cup, YUM! Once I finish lunch, I'll try to find people or hang out in my room or go to the gym. My next post I'll talk about how a dwarf works out.
At night there have been frat parties where you walk into a house and it's packed and hot and loud. So far, every frat party I've been to hasn't disappointed :). When not at a frat, a typical night out in Tulane is at The Boot. The Boot was just voted the number one college bar in America and it lives up to its title, the line is always out the door and its always a good time.
Ask anyone about New Orleans and they automatically think of Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras and beads. Well yesterday, I got to experience two out of the three. Yesterday was Southern Decadence which is a gay pride festival and girls on my floor and I hopped on the bus and streetcar to see what it was all about. Music was blasting and everyone was loud and proud. We met a lot of interesting people, some wearing shoes bigger than me but they were FIERCE! Anyways, throughout the festival, people kept asking to take their pictures with me, pick me up, to be given as a gift and other outlandish things. Needless to say it got to the point where I felt uncomfortable. I have never been objectified to that extent and I just wanted to get out of the situation, so my friends and I did and we had the most interesting taxi driver in all of New Orleans.
Being a dwarf I know I stand out and I know I'm going to get unwanted attention from people, but dwarves aren't objects, we're people. It's hard to be treated like everyone else when I don't LOOK like everyone else but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop asking, I'm just going to ask louder.
So yeah I think that sums up my first week in The Big Easy. Oh and by the way I got the beads for blowing kisses and simply standing on the street, not doing the typical thing to get beads. If you don't know what that is, google it.
See y'all later!
-Jillian Ilana
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