Meet this week’s Campus Cutie, Julia Kaback! Hailing from The Big Apple, this outgoing, creative sophomore loves to drink Ice Chai and watch Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt! Read more to find out where her favorite spot on campus is and how she makes Harris gourmet!
Class Year: 2018
Hometown: New York City, NY
Major: American Studies – I have yet to declare
Minor: Maybe Dance
Extracurricular activities: Secretary of Club Tennis, Tutor at the ARC, Contributor to Spoon University, Campus Cutie, Member of Hillel
Celeb Crush: Hugh Jackman
Favorite book: My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme
Favorite TV show: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Favorite movie: The Parent Trap (1998)
Favorite play or musical: Pippin
Favorite color: Blue
Spirit animal: Lillian the Landlady from Kimmy Schmidt
Guilty pleasure: ABC Family and Iced Chai from Coffee Grounds… it’s a tie
Personal motto: Without problems life would be really boring, we need solutions to become better people.
Favorite place on campus: Zach’s Hillel House
You’re really interested in food and food writing. What is your favorite food? This is really complicated, because as a “Foodie” I feel obligated to say everything, but if I had to choose one thing it would be the Clam Chowder with homemade oyster crackers from the Oyster Club in Mystic. I can’t replicate this dish, and it reminds me of eating clam chowder with my family for Sunday lunch at home. Plus, it’s not Manhattan clam chowder, so it’s creamy and super unhealthy making it all the more better.
What is the most interesting food you’ve ever eaten? My parents took the family to Queens for “authentic” Chinese food and insisted that the waitress do all the ordering. She placed an order for wasabi covered conch, and it was foul. Never had I tasted anything so rubbery and slimy, let alone foreign. I stuck with sesame chicken and fried rice from here on out at Chinese restaurants. It’s basic but never disappoints.
If you could choose a world leader to have dinner with, who would you choose and where would you wine and dine? I recently went to Israel and fell in love with the history of the country, so the person would be Theodor Herzl. We would legally (the drinking age in Israel is 18) wine on wine from the Golan region and then eat at this little place in a Druse village. The meal is bababganosh, kabobs, and labanee yogurt with za’taar with tons of hot pita bread. Labanee is thick yogurt and can be eaten at any meal.
What is your go-to Harris meal? I love to take pasta from the pasta bar, grated cheese from the salad bar, butter, and some milk and make my own mac and cheese in the microwave. If I am feeling “healthy,” I will put some veggies on it, but that’s when I have the energy to walk back to the food with my steaming hot bowl praying my hands won’t fall off.
Do you have a favorite class or professor taken at Conn? I would say “Food: Writing and Reading” with Jessica Soffer who is an alum of the college. I was pushed to think critically about my writing, but also about my own personal relationship with food. I left class hungry every week, but also a better writer as we went through several drafts of pieces we were working on in class. The class also allowed me to explore the field of Food Writing, which is a career I am thinking about pursuing in the future.
Do you have an embarrassing Camel moment? I once showed up at Office Hours on a Monday when the professor told me that we were meeting on Tuesday. It was a Monday morning, and I was coming off of 4 hours of sleep as well as not eating breakfast that morning.
How do you feel about being Campus Cutie? It’s a nice perk; can I put it on my email heading?