Sticks And Stones Can Break My Bones

So the Tufts memory I shared last night at Gifford House dates way back to freshman year. I was rushed to the ER my first week at college and spent the night in a Medford hospital...but, contrary to what you might think, it had nothing to do with underage drinking or raucous behavior.

I've dislocated my knee 4 times in 5 years. So, on the very first day of class--History 22, Renaissance and Reformation, to be exact--I'm walking out of the classroom and all of a sudden my kneecap pops out and I flail to the ground. I watch my terrified professor's eyes roll to the back of his head before he quietly walks backward out of the room and runs far, far away. Luckily, Liz, one of the girls I had just met during Freshman Orientation, takes control of the situation and calls the Tufts Police, the Medford Firefighters, and TEMS--the student EMT's.

I ride in an ambulance to the nearest hospital, and Liz arranges for my friends Ashley and Rachael to come meet me there. (Mind you, I've known all these girls for about 72 hours, so I'm incredibly thankful they kept me company!) Crutches in tow, I head back to Tufts and recuperate in the sanctity of my dorm, Houston Hall.

My professors are incredibly patient when I'm on crutches. Political Science Professor Deborah Schildkraut, a fellow Tufts grad, wrote me empathetic emails about the difficulty of scaling the Hill while disabled. Strangers opened doors for me, and the Tufts Police drove me to my classes.

So I'm all well and healed...and then, a month later, walking down the Houston Hall corridor, my knee dislocates AGAIN. Repeat TEMS, Police, Firefighters, ER, hospital. This time, my friends Katherine and Jessie join me at 4 AM at the Winchester Hospital and we spend the night watching infomercials while I'm on a morphine drip.

The entire zany situation illustrated to me that, even in a foreign environment during my first few weeks of school, Tufts individuals were willing to go out of their way to help. I'm still close friends with the girls who kept hospital bedside vigil. Four years later, when I run into Tufts Police officers on the street, they still ask me, "Yo, how's your knee?"

Last summer, the orthopaedic surgeon who performed arthroscopic surgery on my knee went on one of my admissions tours. His son was considering Tufts.