Professor Baram is my academic advisor. He's an anthropology professor and has been what has kept me at New College, even though I always wanted to stay. For me, he is just an incredible professor, an incredible person. Working with him one on one, we've established a real relationship where I can ask him about graduate school and about my future plans. I can talk to him about Israel, since he's Israeli himself. He's someone that I can really depend on as an academic advisor and not just as a teacher--we have a great relationship. I've taken almost all of the courses that he offers. I think that the kind of relationship that you can establish with your professors is what is so unique about this community. We call our professors by their first names and they really are our friends as well as our teachers. They really help us with finding our true direction.
In Professor Baram's classes, you have to do your reading – he'll know if you haven't. In class, you talk about the reading, and about other issues. It's neat because everybody gets to say something, so you really feel like everybody is impacting the class. Classes here are very much a dialogue between students and teachers, an interactive process. That's why I love anthropology and the religion program as well, because you have that space where you sit around and you really discuss things, you're not just being lectured at. When I was abroad studying at Hebrew University it was 'the teacher's up there, the students are back here and I'm being lectured at.' I missed New College so much because I missed feeling empowered as a student and knowing that I was a really important part of classroom discussion.
