Becca Baron ’23 is hot shit. Or so she used to think. Other people would probably still agree—she’s a well-known face on campus, from performing with the Mazel Tones and Gag Reflex to giving campus tours. Baron sat down with The Argus to reflect on her time as a TA for Associate Professor of the Practice in the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life Amy Grillo, her connections with the Wesleyan Jewish Community (WJC) through a cappella, and the importance of her relationships with others.

The Argus: My first question is the classic one: Why do you think you were nominated for WesCeleb?

Becca Baron: I think the activities that I’m involved in are pretty public-facing, like improv. We’re always doing big performances. A cappella is a little bit less so—the Mazel Tones has maybe more of a niche audience. Giving tours is pretty public. 

I think I’m pretty friendly. I put myself out there a bit. I always try to do a little chit-chat on the Usdan line. Freshman year, I feel like I knew more people than I do now.

A: Really?

BB: Yeah. Part of it is also that I went to school with all the same people from kindergarten all the way to graduation. We were all basically cousins, and I was so sick of everybody I went to high school with. When I came to college, I had a lot of expectations about really making new friends. 

A: Do you think you would change the expectations you put on yourself?

BB: I was happy with what I did. It’s funny, I have a cousin who’s a first-year student right now. Before they came to Wes, I was like, “Oh, orientation was the best week of my life.” And all my friends were like, “Are you kidding me? I would sit in my room and cry.” But I literally had a blast. I think I’m also pretty extroverted, so I get a lot of energy from being around new people, and I was just bouncing around. 

A: What got you interested in your majors?

BB: I chose Wesleyan partly because I was a big theater kid and I was pretty sure that I didn’t want to study theater, but I knew that I wanted to be able to do theater. So freshman year, I was exploring all my other possible interests besides theater. I took sign language, I took a government class, and I took an astronomy class. I was really bopping around and didn’t know where I’d land.

And then I took “Schools in Society” with Amy Grillo. That’s just an amazing class. Amy’s incredible; I’m a TA for her now, and I was like, “This education stuff is really cool.” So I just started taking more Education Studies classes. I’d also been taking a lot of psychology classes and I wasn’t loving them. I kept feeling like, okay, I get these concepts, but I feel like there’s so much missing from this conversation.

I talked to [Professor of Education Studies Anna Shusterman] about it, who is now one of the co-chairs of the Education Studies Department. I was like, psychology is cool, but I feel like there’s so much that it’s not accounting for. She was the one who said, “You should really check out a SISP [Science in Society Program] class.” And I was like, no, no, no. Because I thought that SISP was for pre-med people. I didn’t even know that was something for me. And she really encouraged me to look into it. I’d also thought about being a FGSS [Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies] major, but SISP was great because I could combine psych, FGSS, and Education Studies as a linked major. So it all kind of worked out.

A: Are there any professors that you feel have really shaped your experience at Wesleyan?

BB: I think Amy Grillo definitely has shaped my Wesleyan experience a lot. She’s the professor who I’ve taken the most classes with. She’s just a very special person and has such strong convictions. She’s an incredible teacher. She convinced me to take a lot of my classes pass/fail, so she’s definitely influenced a lot of how I think about my coursework and how I navigate my academics.

I also feel like there were a lot of professors who I really bonded with on Zoom who I haven’t gotten to connect with anymore, like [Professor of the Practice in Quantitative Analysis] Robert Kabacoff. This is such an underrated opinion, but I really loved “Applied Data Analysis,” the intro stats class that everyone takes that most people think is horrible. Professor Kabacoff would agree to Zoom with me for an hour and work on my code. After COVID I saw him and said hi, and he had no idea who I was. 

A: You also mentioned being a TA. What has that experience been like for you? 

BB: It’s been great. I’m a TA for this class called “Practicum in Education,” where each student in the class gets a placement in a public school in the area. You do a lot of observation and reflection in the classroom, and then you come together once a week for three hours. It’s the most truly seminar-style class I’ve ever taken at Wesleyan. Professor Grillo barely talks once we get going. Everyone was willing to participate, and we all became pretty close and had so much fun in the class.

I learned so much from what other people had to say that I initially asked Professor Grillo if I could TA it just because I wanted to have the experience again. Now I’m the TA, which has been great. It’s a lot of coordinating logistics. But I love hearing everyone’s experiences. It’s really thought-provoking and generative.

A: Moving outside the classroom, how did you get into Mazel Tones?

BB: I’ve always been obsessed with a cappella, at least since “Pitch Perfect” came out. That was my movie. Anna Kendrick’s character is named Becca, so I was like, this is really for me. I auditioned for a lot of groups and I actually only got into the Mazel Tones, which was a very humbling experience. 

I came into college thinking I was really hot shit and I was quickly humbled. I got all these rejection emails freshman year, but I think the Mazel Tones is the perfect fit for me, and I love it so much.

I had done some Jewish singing at my temple growing up when I was a teacher’s assistant for the little kids. I have really developed [a passion for Jewish music] since being in the Mazel Tones. There’s so much overlap between the Mazel Tones and the WJC—it keeps me coming to Shabbat and it keeps me feeling connected to the Jewish community here. We took six freshmen into the group this semester, and it’s been really exciting to get to usher in the next generation of Mazel Tones. We sing some bangers, honestly. We’re expanding our repertoire this semester.

It’s also interesting to see how different it feels to be in a student group as a freshman versus a senior. As a freshman, you kind of go to rehearsals and you get ushered along by all the upperclassmen. And then when you’re older, you’re trying to foster that community for the next generation.

A: If you had to pick one song to define you, what would it be?

BB: I don’t even know if I can answer that. To be truthful, I don’t listen to that much music, which I think surprises people. Part of it is because I have Apple Music, and it doesn’t do a good job of exposing you to what other people are listening to. I tend to make a playlist every six months to a year that has 10 to 15 songs on it, and then I’ll listen to that playlist for literally the next year. I’ve been listening to “Disco Man” by Remi Wolf. I don’t even know what the lyrics to that song are. Or any song. I’ll have to think about that. 

A: Let’s go to Gag next. What’s your involvement in that like?

BB: Coming to college, I knew I wanted to do improv. I had actually seen Gag perform when I came to school for WesFest, and I immediately decided then and there that I was going to be in that group. I thought I was hot shit. David Lepelstat ’22 graduated last year—I had the biggest crush on him just from seeing him perform. I literally went home and told all the people in my high school. I was like, I actually met this guy. He’s going to be my boyfriend.

I’m being dead serious. I actually went up to them after that show and said, “Hi, my name is Becca, I’ll be a freshman in the fall, and you will see me at auditions.” And they were like, “Okay.” When I got to campus, any time I saw any of the members I would approach them. The story goes that they thought I was incredibly annoying. When I did my audition, they were like, “Ah, shit” because I was actually good at improv.

I didn’t audition for any other improv group, so I was clearly cockier about my improv skills than I was about my a cappella skills, but it worked out in the end. Improv is so fun. Definitely a bit stressful, but I think for both of the performing arts groups I’m in, they’re very much like team sports. I don’t get as nervous because you’re always relying on each other, both in a cappella and in improv. It’s about developing close relationships. There’s nothing better than making people laugh.

A: What advice would you give your freshman-year self? 

BB: I don’t know. Honestly, I think I did it pretty well. I wish I had stuck with sign language, because learning a language in a setting like Wesleyan is not an opportunity that you get all the time. And it sucks to be monolingual. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with how things have gone.

Some great advice that I got as a freshman was that being alone is not the same thing as being lonely. I think especially your freshman year, you feel like you always need to be with people. I requested a single dorm room freshman year, and I think I really benefited from my time alone.

A: Last is my scariest question: What’s on the horizon for you after Wesleyan? 

BB: It’s hard. When I think about my life and what’s important to me, my relationships with other people are the most important thing in my life. I’m interested in working in early childhood education, so probably a preschool setting. There are a lot of paths to becoming a preschool teacher. It’s also the kind of thing where there are kids in preschool everywhere in the world, so it’s not location-specific.

It’s really hard to think about not living five minutes from everyone that you love. If I’m following my heart, I want to see where all the people I love end up and just follow them. Because at the end of the day, I think that’s the most important thing for me. 

Correction: an earlier version of this article misstated the title of the course that Baron is a TA for. It is “Practicum in Education,” not “Practicum and Education.” 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Cameron Bonnevie can be reached at cbonnevie@wesleyan.edu