How NOLA Built Me – By Carlos Zervigon - Tulane University Athletics

One of my favorite memories of growing up in New Orleans is being an explorer on my bike. In fourth and fifth grade, I attended Audubon Charter whose campus was Uptown. After school, my brother and our friends would ride our bikes around the neighborhood.

Every day, we would go a little farther out. Test our limits. See how much farther we could go. One day, we went all the way to Audubon Park. Then farther down Maple Street. One day we made it all the way down to Tulane. Exploring the city on my own terms helped bring me closer to the place where I now attend college.

Even before those days, though, I started to learn what New Orleans is all about as a community. When I was in second grade, Hurricane Katrina hit. At the last second, my family decided to leave for Nashville and eventually spent some time in Washington state.

Around Thanksgiving, we came back to New Orleans. I found it strange at the time that a lot of friends I made in elementary school just never came back. I stayed in touch with some of them, but having some of your closest friends just leave was very strange.

The city was much quieter after Katrina. But the people who did come back were ready to get back to their normal lives. That speaks to the resilience of people and especially the people of New Orleans that they can come back from a situation as difficult as Katrina and want to get on with their normal lives.

Now, more than a decade later, the city is growing in different ways. I notice people moving here from other cities, helping to grow our city into even more of a multicultural hub. It adds a new dynamic, and it gives the people who did stay after Katrina an even stronger sense of community.

When it came time to go to college, I wanted to try something new, and my parents encouraged me to expand my horizons. After going to Jesuit High here in the city, I decided to go to Fordham University, a Jesuit university in New York City. Once I got there, though, I was a total fish out of water.

In New Orleans, meeting someone on the street might start with a conversation about where you went to high school. Before you knew it, you figured out a two- or three-person connection between yourself and this stranger. In New York, there was none of that. New Orleans is great because despite being a large city, it has the feeling of one giant community. I didn't get that from New York either.

Also, the New York winters were rough on this Louisiana kid.

So after a year of Fordham, I decided to move back to my home city and attend school at Tulane. I was able to join the cross country team as a walk-on, and I immediately felt appreciated for all the hard work I was putting into the team. Coach Peterson noticed that hard work right away, telling me about how I was improving the atmosphere on the team. After a year, he even put me on partial scholarship which was a really nice moment.

Besides running cross country and track, Tulane gave me a great opportunity academically. I was going to do biological sciences at Fordham, but I realized I wanted to focus my studies more specifically on ecology and evolutionary biology. At Tulane, we have tremendous access to the environment nearby and I wanted to take advantage of that. And after I graduate, my degree at Tulane will be a huge help in getting me into veterinary school.

Coming back to Tulane and New Orleans also helped me learn a big lesson I wish I could tell my freshman-year self. No matter where you find yourself, you need to have pride and confidence in the fact that you are doing your best. In New Orleans, your individual impact on things is really appreciated. It's a tight-knit community, and I love my hometown.

My name is Carlos Zervigon and I am Nola Built.

How NOLA Built Me – By Carlos Zervigon

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Carlos Zervigon

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