This week, The Argus sat down with ASHA-coordinator-frisbee player-singer-teacher-practitioner of joy, Isadora Goldman Leviton ’25. Soaking up the early April sunshine, the education studies and American Studies double major shed light on her diverse campus involvement, her love for education, and why senior year has been her favorite year yet.
The Argus: Why do you think you were nominated to be a WesCeleb?
Isadora Goldman Leviton: I think that I have my hands in a lot of different [things] dispersed throughout this campus, which is lovely, and it means that I love and know a lot of people.
A: How has being involved in so many different things on campus shaped your Wesleyan experience and the way you value community and joy?
IGL: For me, ASHA [Adolescent Sexual Health Awareness] is just the most intellectual and interesting space on this campus. I’ve never been so intellectually challenged by a group of people and also so supported and loved. It has given me a space not only to become a much better educator, but also a better thinker. I also just love talking about sex, and I love that I can do that with people that I love. My co-coordinators are unbelievable and also two of my closest friends. I’ve learned so much. I feel so prepared in a lot of ways that I don’t think I would have otherwise.
Vish [Vicious Circles] is a totally separate community for me. I’ve continued with it because I’m terrible at it, and it’s really good for me to be really bad at something and to keep going. I cannot throw a frisbee, but it brings me so much joy, and the fact that I’ve kept going has been such a good learning experience for me. It’s fun to run around.
Mazels [Mazeltones a capella] is the most extraordinary space I’ve ever been in in my life. And I don’t say that lightly or dramatically. I really feel like there’s no group of people in the world who know me the way that they do. It’s such a beautiful space to be a Jewish person. We make beautiful music, but I think it’s much deeper than that. We spend a lot of time together, and we cook together, and we eat together, and we sing together. We had this reunion over winter break that I’d been planning. It was actually, I think, without question, the best weekend of my life, which is so silly and ridiculous. But I think I’ve watched us step up and embody what it means to be family as an action verb. I’ve had so much fear about what it means to graduate and to move on from this space. But I am reminded that this is a commitment I made for the rest of my life, which is an interesting thing to recognize that I didn’t really realize I had done at 18. The alumni are extraordinary and equally as committed as they were when they were here. [They’re] committed to each other.
A: You mentioned education studies. Did you always know you wanted to be a teacher? How has that shifted throughout your four years here?
IGL: I always knew I wanted to be in education. I was a kid who played classroom, and I think it’s partially because I’m really bossy. So I came into Wesleyan knowing I wanted to do education and something else. American Studies was not my initial choice, but it has all worked out. I think by my junior year in high school, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I had an advisor, actually. The last acknowledgement in my thesis is for her, and she really embodied what it meant to be an educator in the truest sense of the word. She loved me and knew me better than I think I knew myself. And for her, teaching was a radical political act. I didn’t know that queer teachers existed like that. And I feel very lucky. I literally have followed exactly in her footsteps, and I’m gonna do what she did.
I knew that Wesleyan didn’t have a teaching licensure program, and there were some times where there was a push and pull about that, but I’m glad that I stuck with it. I think I have a much higher level view of education and education systems and the way that they exist in the greater national conversation than I would if I just had gotten a teacher licensure, and I feel much more prepared to do some of the hard work of teaching that’s not the classroom stuff because of that. So I do think it was the right decision, and I love being in the Ed[ucation] Studies Department. I have never been more supported by a group of adults in my life: [Assistant Professor of Education Studies] Alisha Butler, [Associate Professor of the Practice in Education Studies] Rachel Besharat Mann, [and Associate Professor of the Practice in Environmental Studies and the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life] Amy Grillo have all played such a huge role in my life.
A: You have a second Instagram account where you post about joy every day. How did you start this account, and how do you find time to be present within your joy?
IGL: It’s my whole thesis, so I’ve got a lot to say about joy. It’s seriously how I lead my life. You asked if my Instagram was a means of creating joy or [of] thinking about joy. I think, in some ways, [it’s] not at all. That’s something I’ve been thinking about, because I don’t know how to change it. I don’t want social media to be an outlet for joy. I don’t think that my cell phone should have anything to do with my levels of joy. In fact, I don’t want them to be interrelated at all. But I do love that I’m tracking it and that I can always go back and see that there were things, even on the worst, most horrible days, that were bringing me joy. I think I will probably change its form eventually. I want to get to a full calendar year, which is in two months. For me, joy is not the absence of hurt and harm and sorrow and the devastation and grief that life is, but it’s the way that we hold each other through it and hold ourselves through it. Joy is so based in community. I think that’s been a huge thing for me to understand. I [also] find a lot of joy in my solitude. No one in the world knows me better than I know myself, which is such a cool thing to realize.
A: I know for a lot of people on campus, you’re a role model and mentor of sorts. I’m wondering what you think about the cyclical nature of being in college? Who were your mentors in your first year, and how has that shifted as you’ve become a mentor to others?
IGL: We have this term in Judaism: l’dor v’dor, which means from generation to generation. I think a lot about it in places like this, because Wesleyan doesn’t have an institutional memory without its student body. I was very lucky in that I was welcomed into the school [through] Mazels. Mazels is typically matriarchally run. We have horizontal leadership, but there’s always a matriarch at the helm. There were two in my freshman year, Sarah Backer ’22 and Leah Baron ’22. I was really sick my freshman year and was grappling with my own chronic illness and how to navigate that. I was very cared for by them. I would spend days on days on days at their senior houses. It was like, “Oh my God, I get to be taken care of, and then I get to care for others,” which are such beautiful things. Community is cyclical, and I appreciate that people see me as a leader. I don’t take it lightly, but it’s also funny, because I don’t think I see myself that way all the time. But I love, I love, love, love that I get to care for the people in my life so deeply. It’s such a privilege, and doing so with the other Mazels seniors, Nate Kianovsky ’25 and Henry Owens ’25, has been so special. There’s something so beautiful about the way that I get to interact with the people in my life; I feel so lucky.
A: You mentioned that senior year has been your favorite year. What differentiated this year from others; what made this year the best for you?
IGL: I think most of it has to do with my house. I love this house. I love my housemates. We laugh a lot. We cook a lot. We’re watching “Severance” as a house right now. I often will sit here on this porch and just be like, “Thank God, I get to do this another day. This is the greatest thing I”ve ever done.” I think living in community is such a beautiful thing and not something that I’m gonna get like this ever again. And I relish it. I love it so much, and I love having Mazels in my home. We’re here every other Thursday. This is my favorite house I’ve ever had in my whole life. It’s just unbelievably sweet and stable. Everybody in my life feels very self-assured in a way that none of us did a couple years ago. It’s a happy time.
A: How are you planning on celebrating your thesis?
IGL: One of my big goals is, by the end of the semester, to have it published a couple of places in accessible language. [My housemate and I] are gonna do a belated Passover Seder. I have committed to spending as much time as I dedicated to my thesis in the fall and the spring to being outside and swimming.
A: What are you most excited about post-grad?
IGL: I’m taking a year. Amy Grillo is helping me build out a bed in the back of my car out of a wood platform, and I’m traveling across the country for almost four months. I’m visiting so many people from all parts of my life. I’m so excited for it. I’ll get back mid-September and am moving in with my grandparents. I’m going to spend some time in Brazil with my friend Maya and then [go] to Providence for [graduate] school in the spring.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Arya Dansinghani can be reached at ad**********@******an.edu.
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