What is your major, and why did you decide to pursue this degree?
I'm undecided but considering creative writing. I love to write and would happily spend the rest of my life doing that...you know, if I didn't have to pay bills or anything.

Where are you from? Where did you go to high school?
I'm from West Hempstead, NY, which is on Long Island. I went to the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC).

Do you have any siblings?
Yup - my brother is two years younger than me.

What is your favorite book? Why?
It's too hard to just pick one 😣 but if I had to, I guess I'd say Skyhunter by Marie Lu. The plot is fascinating and super engaging, and the characters have a ton of depth; I read the first book in a day (and did the same thing with the sequel when it came out). Also, the concept of a guy with giant metal wings is just really really cool.

Do you have a hobby? Why do you love it?
Like I mentioned above, I love writing. Depending on what I'm working on, I love it for different reasons: if I'm writing something more emotional, it can be incredibly cathartic; if it's more lighthearted and bantering, it's just genuinely fun to write. There's a special kind of adrenaline rush that comes from my fingers flying across the keyboard and having the words flow easily (unfortunately, this isn't always the case when I sit down to write, but it's amazing when it does happen).

What is your favorite Jewish food?
Hmm...I might have to say bagels.

What's your dream job?
An author :D alternatively, being a translator of books would also be really cool. I just need to become fluent in a language other than English first ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What's a quote or saying that you like?
"If it's not all right, then it's not the end." It's a line from a song by one of my favorite artists, Andy Grammer, and I think it's important to keep in mind even when it seems like everything's going wrong.

How do you envision yourself in twenty years?
In my dream world? Living in a countryside cottage, writing and hiking and drawing all the time, renowned around the world for my literary masterpieces, and curling up into bed each night with a good book. A bit more realistically, working a satisfying job that earns me enough to live on while allowing me the free time to write and draw and read as I like. I can live without a bad movie adaptation of my work (*cough cough Divergent*).

What is your favorite Jewish childhood memory?
I'm a big Star Wars fan, and so there was one time in middle school when I just started running through characters and plot points and somehow deciding they were all references to Judaism somehow: Jedi Masters being like rabbeim, the Force kind of being like Hashem in that it guides every being...you get the idea. It'd probably make for a really good dvar torah if I spent some time fleshing it out better.