Oberlin Hillel: 10 Awesome Facts About Our Student Of The Week Talia Rodwin

Meet our student of the week, Talia Rodwin! Learn about her many interests, activities, and even a few fun secrets!

1. Meet Talia

Meet Talia Rodwin. Fourth year student from Rockville Maryland. Singer, Poet, Academic, all around lover of life and much more!

2. OSCA Lifer

CDS? What's that? Talia wouldn't know because she's been in OSCA for her whole time at Oberlin! Her freshman year she ate and lived in Tank. For the past three years she's made her dining home in Fairkid where she is currently the DLEC (hot shot!)

Fun fact alert While visiting colleges as a senior in high school, Talia visited a coop and was drawn to it's distinct... sights and smells... which reminded her of her wonderful summer camp experiences, and tipped the scales in favor of Oberlin!

3. She's a poet (and I bet you didn't know it)

Talia is pictured to the left

Along with studying the great writers of the past and present as an English major, Talia is also a rising literary star of her generation. Ever since she was a young child she has been journaling, writing poetry and dreaming big. She's written novellas, poetry and has been published in Oberlin's own literary magazine "The Plumb Creek Review."

Here is an excerpt from her 2001 movie idea entitled "Talia's Movie Idea."

"There were some good people and some bad people and the good people had a big boat and the bad people had a small boat. They were all sailing out to sea to escape from a dangerous country. On the good people's boat there were a lot of kids. They had saved the kids from the dangerous country. There were two twins. They both had red hair and one of them had freckles.

The bad people wanted to capture some kids. So the bad people did capture some kids on their boat. They captured the twin with freckles, but they didn't catch her sister and they wanted to. So the twin with freckles said, "I'll go get her," but this was a trick. So she went onto the good people's boat, leaving her feet halfway off. She got onto the boat and kicked the bad woman off. That was very lucky for the twin with freckles because she knew how to swim. So she swam back and forth from the good people's boat to the bad people's boat carrying the kids back."

4. Shakespeare, the dog

In addition to her abundant literary portfolio, Talia's dog is also a living testament to one of the most celebrated old dead guys to ever put quill to parchment, Billy Shakespeare.

Talia recounts the fateful day that Shakespeare literally joined her family.

"Well, my family went to this dog rescue to pick up a dog. And the people at the rescue told us that they were tired of all of these dogs named muffin and fifi. So they had named the dog Shakespeare... and when my family saw the dog, we all looked at each other, and knew it was fate that this dog would join our family..."

5. CHALLaH caperson

Over the past four years, Talia has spent every semester singing in Oberlin's only Jewish music a cappella group, CHALLaH cappella! After a long musical break in high school, Talia was excited to be reunited with one her deepest passions, song.

Fun fact alert Talia's favorite "CHALLaH rrangement" "Fidelity" by Regina Spektor has not been performed since her Freshman year! Help her bring it back by contacting your local CHALLaH cappella member! And if you'd like to hear more of CHALLaH cappella's arrangements check out their youtube channel!

6. Camper at heart

Talia is a full fledged Habo! She has spent the past 11 summers at camp Moshava in Northern Maryland. As both a camper and a counselor, she's learned about social justice and kibbutz style living which has shaped her in innumerable ways.

Fun fact alert Recently Habonim Dror made national news in their efforts towards gender inclusive Hebrew. Talia is happy to be a part of that movement! Check out the Washington Post article here.

7. Multi Talented

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Amongst her many skills, Talia also can sing the alphabet backwards, tie a cherry stem into a knot in her mouth AND ancay eakspy uentfly igpay atinlay!

8. Parlez-vous Francais?

Did you know that Talia has been speaking french since the 7th grade??? Not only is Talia fluent but she also spent a semester abroad in the south of France in the small town of Aix-en Provence. While there, she sampled fine french wine, fromage and was able to explore her favorite country, she even was mistaken for a native Frenchwoman!

9. Squirrel Girls

A fun fact you may not have known about Talia is that she's a famous internet meme! (No actually.) The story goes that when Talia was in 11th grade, she and some friends stumbled upon a dead squirrel in the park. After posing with it, and posting the image on facebook she and her friend went viral reaching both tumblr and reddit fame within weeks! Even though the internet sensation may have died out, you can still see Talia and her friends on Russian motivational posters.

(Can you translate the poster? We can't.)

10. "Now that you've (almost) graduated college what are you going to do next?"

"I'm going to Harry Potter World!" Although she has great aspirations to be a great musician, poet, wine and cheese critic, and cherry stem tie-er, before she can do any of that she has a date with her sister to go to Harry Potter World after graduation!