The Reason Freshman Sprint to List 101 Each Week
It is so nice to be around JTS during the holiday time. The JTS Sukkot are up everyone is still talking about the high holidays and looking ahead to Simchat Torah. For List College First Years this means midterms are coming, lots of schoolwork, and much going on all over the city. This week has been especially nice because of the weather. High of 86 degrees in mid October? It feels like summer. With LC first year’s being so busy with school and everything JTS, Columbia, and the city has to offer, one of the favorite parts of my week is my List 101 class.
List 101, the seminar for all first year students is a great opportunity to spend time with other members of the freshman class. Every Tuesday all Joint Program and Double Degree students come together for discussion, activities, and food. List 101 is taught by Ruth Decalo, the Director of Student Life, Dean Rebecca Grabiner, Associate Dean of List College, and four amazing List 101 interns who are students from a variety of grades and backgrounds within the programs. The interns spend a great deal of time organizing each List 101 session and have tried to make each class engaging and interesting.
Each session of List 101 brings something new. In our first week we learned about getting around NYC and split up for NYC trivia. We spent two weeks discussing Jewish identity, and had the opportunity to hear from List College Dean, Dean Schwartz discuss the many flavors and identities of American Jews. We have spent time in each session getting to know the members of our class better and finding out what we have in common with each other.
Last week, as part of List 101 the freshman class elected its class president. Two students gave compelling speeches, really showing their love and commitment for the freshman class. I think I saw the candidates shaking hands and kissing babies the entire week before. When the final votes were tallied and all of the hanging chads were counted, List College Student Council President, Hannah Goodman announced that the elected freshman class president was Batya Franklin! We look forward to working with Batya and know that she will represent our class well this year!
Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention about List 101… we get free lunch! The List 101 interns especially enjoy picking the meals that we get every Tuesday, and we have been treated to some great meals including pasta, grilled cheese, specialty pizza, and more. A highlight for me so far was watching one of our guest speakers, Resident Director Eric Woodward throw grilled cheese sandwiches at every student who walked into the class late as he was speaking. Never a dull moment. The most important, and arguably most delicious part of the List 101 meal is the world famous JTS cookies. Honestly, my literary skills are not advanced enough to describe these cookies in a mere blog post. Guess you will need to get one in the JTS dinning hall to understand the obsession. The week there were no cookies was a very tense moment for all List 101 participants and Ruth Decalo has promised students that this would not happen again ☺.
Throughout the rest of the semester we will discuss many more issues, have lunch with the deans of all three colleges (JTS, Barnard, Columbia), speak about time management, pluralism and theology, and much more. While everyone is running in a million directions all week, it is really special to get to have List 101 as a full freshman class each week. I hope Tuesday lunches next semester will still include cookies. Maybe that should be your first action as freshman president Batya?
