The Wild New Orleans

    New Orleans is crazy. It is nothing like I imagined. I assumed it would be like any other big city. I have been to Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton and other cities. In New Orleans, the streets were filled with trash, people drank all day and street racers owned the streets in the late hours of the evening. Seeing New Orleans shocked me. I did not expect to see so much poverty, drugs, trash and violence. The atmosphere reminded me of going to Haiti. However, the architecture of New Orleans was spectacular. Most of the architecture made me feel like I was not in the United States. This is because New Orleans was founded by the French in 1718. Then, in 1803, the United States purchased all of Louisiana. During the early 19th century New Orleans was one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the U.S. due to its importing and exporting of goods. 

    We had the freedom to explore the city and try various foods the first day we were in the city and we used every bit of our freedom to explore. We walked into every art gallery and hat shop we saw. Unfortunately, I was disappointed in the food. For $30 a plate, the food was mediocre. I ended up spending nearly $400 on food and I skipped out on meals. I did not purchase a single souvenir or item of clothing. I cannot even imagine how much the other students spent throughout the week. 

    I was in New Orleans for the American Marketing Association conference. I had the opportunity to participate in the Marketing Simulation competition and our team was ridiculously close to receiving an award. We believe we got 4th or 5th place out of at least 50 teams. The simulation was similar to the simulation we are competing in my Principles of Social Media course. The competition was more complicated and contained more tasks and rounds to complete. Aside from competing, I attended various intelligent speakers. Every speaker I attended spoke about influencing, building our brand or being authentic. My favorite speaker was Katie Fabry. She was young, enthusiastic and spoke extraordinarily well. Katie works at the Wall Street Journal as a marketing director. The conference was awesome and I definitely recommend all marketing and public relations students to attend in the upcoming years. 

    I adore traveling and I will never turn down a chance to learn something new, network with other brilliant people or see another city or culture. Nevertheless, I have realized that I prefer to drive places. Flying is uncomfortable. Flights are unreliable and you never know if you will be delayed or canceled. Flying days are long because you have to arrive multiple hours before the flight in order to make it through security. Another reason I do not enjoy flying is that I have only ever flown on budget airlines. I had barely half a seat on the plane and had to persevere through snoring men, crying babies and women without their shoes on. New Orleans was an incredible, shocking, crazy adventure. I highly recommend seeing it if you get the chance, but I would not recommend living there!