My fair Dillard was ultimately the best decision for my undergraduate education.
A fine liberal arts education, pride in self and the bravery to apply what I learned over those four years differently are some of the things that I got out of my experience at Dillard University.
College began in August 2005.
Honestly, I started out at Dillard disgruntled and resentful that my mother would send me further south from my home in Atlanta, when I was trying to leave and go north. I had every intention on transferring out in my sophomore year.
Having not actually seen the campus or been to New Orleans until it was time for freshman orientation, I thought my mind was made up on this plan.
Despite my 18-year-old disposition, I was excited to get out the house and start my life. My older sister and my mom drove me down to help me get settled. We arrived in New Orleans the night before campus opened.
For the first time, I met my great aunt who lived around the corner from Dillard. The New Orleans humidity was a major shock. I could hardly breathe. My great cousin showed us around the city. The humid air, palm trees and the foreign New Orleanian accent made me feel as if I was in a foreign country, rather than a city a few hours out of Atlanta.
Yet, for some reason, I fell in love with it all. Within hours, I decided that New Orleans was actually a cooler place than Atlanta and I couldn’t wait to get to know my new city more!
My mom and sister moved me into my dorm. I stayed in the Camphor girl’s hall on the second floor. Mom was emotional. Looking back on it, I think she was sad to be letting me go -- her youngest was out of the nest now. But I was invigorated and excited for this new FREEDOM!
Freshman Year: Storm brewing
As I went through freshman orientation week, I immediately found a group of friends all from the Midwest. Even though I was coming from Atlanta, I felt more at home with these three since I was still connected to my Denver roots. We become almost best friends in this short span and quickly become settled in what would be our new homes for the school year.
The first week of classes was a bit hectic. In what now seems like a very small campus, appeared very big and I just couldn’t seem to find my way. I had so much to acclimate to and happily roughed through that week. By Friday night, I was pooped, not really wanting to do anything but sleep and ended up staying in while most of the campus was out at some big party.
The next day, everything changed. Alarms were going off and everyone was frantically packing. Hurricane Katrina was headed to New Orleans and it unexpectedly changed my outlook on life forever.
I was grateful to be at a school that had a disaster preparedness plan in place and no one was left behind when storm finally came.
Dillard packed us in buses and drove us to Shreveport, to our sister school Centenary College of Louisiana. The drive from New Orleans to Shreveport is generally five hours, but this turned into a 12-hour trip because one of our buses caught fire.
I was riding in the second bus of about 10 going to Shreveport. About an hour or so into the trip, we stopped. I looked up and the bus directly in front of me had caught fire. Everyone evacuated and made it to the next bus safely, thank goodness. But it didn’t make it less scary.
My adult life was just getting started and it was beginning to feel as if it was already being snatched away from me.
We finally arrived to Shreveport and spent about a week sleeping in Centenary Gym until a church was kind enough to bus students from surrounding cities back to their homes. The ride back to Atlanta was long and the debris was everywhere. For months, I was in shock from it all.
Through that it experience, however traumatic it was, I knew that Dillard was a place I wanted to stay. It was there, that I ultimately found my family away from home, great professors that cared for me as if I was their child, and an environment that supported me in everything I strived to do (even outside of my department). I learned more about myself and the world through my Dillard. And it was there that I experienced the sweet luxury of seeing the diversity of black people from all over the diaspora and how possible it is to be in an all-black environment and feel supported and loved.
After Hurricane Katrina, I came back to a redeveloping New Orleans. Dillard was trying to find a temporary home and decided to make that place the Hilton Hotel. We stayed downtown -- which was one of the safest places to be at that time -- and lived and played in the area. It was cool to be near everything, but it was interesting to see for the first time how race played into politics. Downtown and Uptown were the first areas to be rebuild, which were not only predominately white but the least affected by the storm.
For Dillard students, we felt the push back from staff who didn’t like the idea of having to serve “poor college kids.” People who visited the city and stayed the hotel, assumed that the Hilton was giving us a handout. It was always offensive because we were still paying to be there, as if we would be paying to be on campus.
Living in a hotel was actually a rather posh setup. Dillard didn’t skimp on anything, having spent millions just to make the following semester possible after Katrina nearly shut down the school for good. It was a testament to the tenacity of the Dillard administration and their willingness to creatively solve major problems. We managed to go on, business as usual, despite our major challenges and completed two semesters worth of work in six months.
Sophomore year: Finding a path
Dillard was an environment that encouraged me to explore everything of interest. Although I was an English and Japanese studies major, I had an interest in entrepreneurship, particularly fashion entrepreneurship. In my sophomore year, a couple of weeks after my 20th birthday Tabeux (Ta-boo) -- my concept of eco-friendly blazers, scarves and shoes for the millennial professional, (schedule to launch this fall) -- was born. The summer before senior year, I put the concept in a contest with Entrepreneur Magazine and was a semi-finalist. I was one of the 10 in the nation to compete and the only semi-finalist from an HBCU. Although I didn't win, I got a lot support from business professors at Dillard to develop my concept. They shared some of the basics of business with me and helped to get started on my entrepreneurial journey. That ultimately led to me start six companies since I graduated in 2010.
The arts played a major role in my educational career. My first gallery openings were on campus and hosted by the visual arts department. There I grew an appreciation for fine arts and the process it took to put an exhibition together. A couple of the professors I was close to in my department would hire me to work art events and conferences off campus. I was exposed the Creole culture and their contribution to the fine arts. I was most intrigued with the Creole opera singers and their magnificent voices. I didn’t know it at the time, but these experiences helped refine me as a person and formulated a colorful social life of artistic events after undergrad.
Studying English and Japanese studies at an HBCU was a fabulous privilege. My dual concentrations developed the intellectualism of my blackness. The majority of my English studies were black studies related. I studied some of the best African-American literature and its relationship with the African American experience during the time it was written.
At the same time I was studying Japanese culture, history and politics. The more I studied both cultures, the more I saw an uncanny connection between African-Americans and Japanese and the similar oppressions they suffered.
I realized that those same “black” issues that my friends and I were having long conversations about were parallel to what other people of color were facing all over the world, It forced me to look at this supremacy concept called racism and struggle more universally.
Junior Year: Doubt
I took spring semester off 2008 off. I was scheduled to travel to Japan that semester, but everything seemed to fall through. My grandmother passed weeks before I was scheduled to leave. Since she was a Filipino lady and survived WWII when the Japanese invaded, she warned me about Japan and urged me to take care of myself when I went. For whatever reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to go to Japan or even go back to New Orleans at the time.
As the months wore on, I wasn't even sure if I would be able to return. My grandfather usually cosigned on my school loans and couldn't do it that year. Everything was in the air. My mother decided to write a letter to the president at the time, Dr. Marvalene Hughes. Within a day my mother was contacted and the process for me to get back into school started. By the fall of 2008, I was back in school. Grateful for the opportunity to continue my education.
That November was particularly special because President Obama was elected. Everyone was elated, of course! I felt lucky because on my HBCU campus, no raucousness arouse, unlike some schools I heard about, which were reportedly outraged at the fact we now had a black president. It was quiet and peaceful across Fair Dillard election night. For us, it was a symbol of the legacy of black colleges -- pride in self, confidence and enough gusto to pursue dreams that we were told weren’t meant for us.
For the next year and half of undergrad, I continued to explore my creative interests in photography, writing and business. I had unimaginable encounters like interviewing Black Thought from the Roots and Amari Baraka two weeks before I graduated. One of the coolest moments on campus was giving a copy of one my screenplays to Spike Lee!
The summer before my senior year, I worked in a corporate environment with a paid PR internship at a construction management firm in the city. I was encouraged by a professor of mine to apply. I earned enough to live in Uptown New Orleans for the summer. I had a very quant apartment right on Prytania St., near a trolley stop on St. Charles. Staying and living in the city of New Orleans was a dream. I really got to know that charm of New Orleans and what it was like to live in the city as an adult. Since I was at this firm, I saw firsthand what was going on to bring New Orleans back to its pre-Katrina state and more so confirmed the politics of color. I wasn’t sure after that time if the corporate environment was where I wanted to be after that summer and focused most of my senior year on figuring out how to be an entrepreneur.
Senior Year: Running for life
My last year almost seemed to be never ending. I was met with a new set of challenges. Starting the semester with a balance that I was unsure how I was going to pay. It was stressful to only have eight classes left before I could get my degree and not really sure if I was going to have a place in class that semester. Walking across campus one day after leaving the financial aid office, I ran into a friend who just joined the cross country team. He told me how they needed girls to join and were giving scholarships for participation. I kind of worked out before that time, a morning jog before class an before class and a little yoga; nothing too serious. I wasn’t really a hardcore runner and didn’t know what I was signing up for.
After joining the team, running became my life for the remainder of my matriculation. It was kind of funny to me because I started out a nerdy chubby freshman and ended college (still nerdy) but athletic. I learned how to exercise properly. I broke the physical limitations that I believed I had, and I had the courage to try things that I would have otherwise been too scared to do. The icing on the cake was earning my scholarship and becoming captain of the track team.
Right before graduation I took a class called publication and research. This was the perfect class to complete my education because it laid out the practical use for my degree. The first day of class, my professor said: “I’m going to show how to be a writer and never go hungry.” The entire semester, we learned how to write different letters, proposals, resumes and everything else that you could ask for about in the writing/publishing world. The class was a perfect cap stone to an already fabulous education. I left with some viable skills that fed me. Even when I didn’t have a real job, I was able to write for people and earn good money. Dillard taught me how to use my degree after college and not feel like it was a waste of time.
Dillard University provided all of the tools I needed to succeed. Even though I went an alternative route from the rest of my peers, I have applied my education varying ways that I would have thought possible. Over the years, my entrepreneurship has been development from the very lessons I learned on the 55-acre campus. I recommend Dillard to any student looking for a great college. Ultimately, everything that you need will be waiting on you. The key is to just have the initiative to go and get it!
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