Since my first year at Tufts, I have been involved with the Tufts chapter of Planned Parenthood Generation Action (PPGA). PPGA is the college chapter of the greater Planned Parenthood organization. At Tufts, our PPGA chapter focuses on advocacy, awareness, and fundraising efforts. Some of our past projects include: a menstrual product drive, a benefit concert, and a panel with the Bad Old Days Posse (a group of women who discuss their experiences pre-Roe v. Wade), and so much more!  

I am currently the vice president of the Tufts chapter of PPGA, and I have loved serving in a leadership position within the club, as it has allowed me not only to lead but also to work on exciting projects of my own design. This semester, I, along with some fellow students in the club, worked on one of my favorite projects yet: a book display in the Tisch Library. Along with being in PPGA, I am also an English major and an avid reader, so this project combined so many of my passions: reproductive rights…

My final blog! I’ve been staring at this blank page, and for once, I’m out of advice. Academics, admissions, clubs, housing, the ever-growing spreadsheet of blog ideas… I think I’ve covered all of what I can. But here I am, a senior in my last semester. And somewhere between that first post I wrote as a wide-eyed 18-year-old and this one, something shifted. Back then, I chose my words carefully, held my tongue, kept things polished and safe. I was still figuring out who I was, and it showed.

I think I know a little better now.

So for this last one, I’m not going to give you a guide or a list or a how-to. Instead, I want to reflect on what four years at Tufts actually taught me. Not about college, but about myself. And the people I’ve met along the way. Maybe some of what I’ve shared here will give you a sense of what to expect, or, at the very least, what’s possible.

When I toured Tufts in high school, my tour guide said something like, everyone here is nice. I’m not sure that’s entirely…

I’ll never forget the first day I met my friend Brian. It was the Sunday before Labor Day, September 3, 2023, three days before I began my first year at Tufts. That night, I joined a group of around 15 other new Jumbos on a trip to Yamato II, an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Copley Square. Since our group was so large, we split into four tables, and I was randomly placed across from Brian. While we stuffed our stomachs with sushi, we bonded over our shared New Jersey roots and propensity for making jokes at the expense of the New York Jets. Over the last three years, Brian has become one of my closest friends at Tufts, and he’s currently one of my housemates. 

A little over two and a half years later, on March 14, 2026, Brian was the first familiar face I saw in a crowd of busy travelers, this time nearly 3,500 miles from Boston, at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands. He and some of my other friends from Tufts were beginning a week-long exploration of Europe for their…

Every Community Health major at Tufts is required to complete an internship before they graduate. It is an incredible opportunity for professional development, and the department has countless resources connect students with opportunities in the Boston area. 

This semester, I am a Global Community Health intern at Partners in Health. Partners in Health is based out of the Prudential Center, which means that I get to finally live out my dream of working in the fanciest corporate building in Boston. I am also working with a research team at Harvard Medical School, so I split my time between the med school campus and the PIH office.

At the beginning of the internship, it was really intimidating to be surrounded by so many accomplished and intense people. I am not a medical student by any means (and I do in fact faint at the sight of blood) so I spent most of my first day at the med school dodging any potential patient interaction. 

However, as the internship went on, I realized how much…

My connection with HSF actually started before I even set foot on the Tufts campus. I applied to be an HSF Scholar during my senior year of high school. That early engagement laid the groundwork for me to attend their National Leadership Conference (NLC) during the summer before my sophomore year. As a Hispanic student, stepping into a room full of…

One of my favorite things about how artsy Tufts students are is the number of art sales and arts and crafts fairs that pop up across campus. It’s a really fun way to see what your peers are up to and support your friends, but it’s also genuinely educational, offering a practical introduction to pricing, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

At first, putting a price on your work can feel strange. What is it based on? Do you factor in hourly labor? Materials? Marketing costs? Events like the SMFA Art Sale, the Sidewalk Sale, and arts and crafts fairs hosted by the Asian American Center, Tufts Community Union, Sex Health Reps, and others are great places to start figuring this out. They’re also complemented by support from the Career Center, professors, and upperclassmen, who can be incredibly helpful when you’re first navigating these questions.

The SMFA Art Sale is the big one. It’s huge—thousands of works, hundreds of artists—and it brings together students, alumni, faculty, staff, and…

Some study spaces on campus are built for getting work done. Others? Not exactly.

Tisch Library is somewhere in between. It’s like, the “I need to get things done, but maybe I’ll just talk to my friends for ten minutes first” library. There’s enough activity around me to make me feel like I’m getting things done just by association, but it’s also easy to get distracted by someone walking by with a funny story about how their day is going.

Fletcher/Ginn Library? That’s for getting work done. If you show up to those places thinking you’re just going to check your messages real quick, the silence will shame you into actually getting work done. I get more done in an hour at those libraries than an entire day at my desk in my dorm.

Then there are the spaces that are really about being around people, not books. The Mayer Campus Center (CC) is perfect if your goal is to do simple tasks while chatting with your friends. It’s social enough that you can study and talk without anyone judging…

Hi Readers,

Nervous about making friends in college? Anxious because this is new for you and your family? Well, listen up because everything will be okay. As corny as it sounds, everything happens for a reason and making friends might seem like the most difficult part of college, but here at Tufts it might be the easiest.

I like to ground myself and remember that other students are all experiencing college for the first time too, whether or not their parents went to university. What I did was participate in the pre-orientation called Building Engagement and Access for Students at Tufts (BEAST). BEAST is primarily geared towards our first generation, low-income students, and it was a week of being surrounded by people who grew up similarly to me, getting to learn about all the many resources at Tufts for first-gen students as well as gaining mentors who can help guide you through your college experience. I still keep in touch with one of my peer leaders because he truly helped give…

Coming out of what is being called the hardest New England winter in a decade, I'm reflecting on my first New England winter three years ago. It was one of the biggest changes for me when I moved to college, being from California. I remember asking my roommate (from New Hampshire) for help finding what I needed to adjust to a much colder winter than I was used to. Three New England winters later, I have narrowed down a list of eight essential items to keep any student warm all winter long.

1. Warm Coat

A pretty self-explanatory item and the first thing that my roommate suggested I find way back when! Something with down or quilting will work best at keeping heat in. You see all kinds of coats and jackets walking around Tufts in the winter, anywhere from a brightly colored puffer jacket to a thick wool trench coat. 

2. Second layer

Easily overlooked but just as important as the outer layer, the second layer provides some extra insulation on the coldest days. I find myself walking…

As soon as I met my host mom, I knew that we had to dress up for Halloween. I was never really a big Halloween person; I would celebrate it when I was younger, but I was getting to the age where Halloween just was not as fun. I knew, though, that this was my opportunity to revive the holiday. Early Friday morning, I began working on my costume. I had the perfect blue shirt, and I had bought a headband for my horns. I was determined to make this the best DIY Sully (from Monsters, Inc.) costume. A couple of days before, we had stopped at a massive mall after our mid-course excursion. There, I was able to find the perfect pink shirt so that my host mom could be Boo. When I got home, I gave her the shirt and very poorly tried to tell her that she should wear it on Friday because it was the costume. My attempts to show her pictures of Sully and Boo helped (at least I think). Yeili helped me cut out purple circles that I would tape onto my shirt while I worked on making horns to tape onto…

Organic Chemistry is notoriously known for its difficulty, whether it is understanding the different mechanisms that occur (meaning too many things to memorize) or being scared that the material won’t just “click.” I am amongst that group where I thought that Organic Chemistry would make or break me, and will be the deciding factor of whether or not I wanted to pursue something in Biochemistry. The class is a stepping stone for many other difficult classes and is a requirement for me to complete. Now taking Organic Chemistry II, I am quite surprised by how wrong I was to assume that this would be the most difficult course I have taken here at Tufts. But fear not as I will help you to understand the benefits of taking Organic Chemistry and how some may find it quite enjoyable. 

Not all memorization!

I think what trips people up about Organic Chemistry is that you will be required to memorize all these different reagents that seem to be randomized. This may be true in Organic Chemistry…

Sitting on a couch that none of us purchased. Sipping coffee that was brewed for no one in particular. Talking about things that matter deeply and things that matter very little. There is a particular kind of life that happens in the off-campus houses surrounding Tufts University - a life made not of grand events but of slow, shared ordinary time.

Our apartment is not beautiful in any conventional sense.

It is a room where the walls are covered in posters and torn magazine pages, placed there by people whose names we may never learn. In the kitchen hangs a tapestry of pandas whose origin has been lost to memory. None of us know how it arrived. None of us have seriously discussed removing it. Some objects, once they settle into a home, begin quietly insisting that they belong there.

There are fridge magnets carried from France, postcards from every corner of the world, and a hospital band that carries the memory of a night that makes us giggle every time we look at it.  

I have always…

When I came to Tufts, I knew I wanted real-world job experience to build skills and figure out career paths that I was interested in, but I didn’t realize just how helpful Tufts would be in helping me find those.

My internship experiences this semester have really solidified that for me. I am currently taking PS-118: Decoding State Government and Politics. It’s not just a class you sit through, as it actively places you at internships within the Massachusetts state government landscape. Students are placed at internships within the state legislature, lobbying firms, state agencies, and more. Through this class, I was connected with the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth, where I am currently interning, and I get to engage directly with policy issues affecting LGBTQ+ young people across the state. It has been an invaluable experience to not only learn about state policy, but then apply the knowledge in a field of policy and advocacy that I am extremely passionate about. In class…

At SMFA, there are student-run exhibitions happening all the time, and a lot of that activity is made possible with student government support. They help connect students with exhibition opportunities through partnerships and funding, and there are even exhibition reps whose whole role is to help students put shows together. 

This support makes a big difference, students putting on shows and curating ends up being very accessible, and people actually have the help and guidance to bring their ideas to life.

This semester, there have already been two shows at Medford Arts Collaborative, organized through our SMFA student government: Recession Indicators and defunded/defunked!, both curated by students. They brought together a wide range of artists from SMFA and the Boston area, and it was cool to see how different people approached themes like economics, material reality, and humor in art. 

There have also been exhibitions on campus, like Temperaments in the SMFA atrium, which focused…

One of my biggest dilemmas during the college admissions process was debating between attending a Historically Black College or University (HBCU) or a Predominantly White Institution (PWI). When I ultimately committed to Tufts, my first and foremost goal was to find and create community. Now in my second year, I can highlight the ways that Tufts facilitates community building within the Black Diaspora.

Pre-Orientation Groups

Tufts offers eight pre-orientation groups focused on various areas of interest, such as fitness or arts and crafts. These pre-orientations allow incoming students to arrive on campus early and spend time with like-minded individuals, jumpstarting their college experience. For students seeking to meet fellow Black students or wanting to learn about the Black community, SQUAD (Students' Quest for Unity in the African Diaspora) takes its students around the Boston area and Tufts, introducing so-called ‘Squadies’ to many different organizations on campus with the Black…