Highlights from this year’s beloved winter custom, where Reedies come together to do their favorite thing: learn.
By Cara Nixon
February 6, 2026
Ah, Paideia. The only place you can learn how to fence, construct your own crossword, understand the cinema of film director Christopher Nolan, and master piping flowers with buttercream all within the span of a week.
This year, Paideia attendees sat in lectures about baseball sabermetrics and the geology of Reed; tested their physical skills in Irish dance and the fourth annual game of Survivor; and flexed their creative muscles in a stand up comedy class and a Japanese calligraphy course.
Here are three highlights from this year’s batch of unique classes, taught by students, alumni, staff, and faculty.
Wildlife Tracking
Did you know our brains likely advanced out of survival skills like tracking?
Wildlife tracking today can be a way to reconnect with that ancestral knowledge, stay safe outdoors, and begin noticing the special details of our ecosystem. Kimber Nelson ’01, nurse by day and wildlife tracker in most other spare moments, taught Paideia students how to track ungulates, rodents, rabbits and hares, canines, felines, and a category he refers to as “5-toed oddballs” (raccoons, opossums, and bears).
The class learned how to identify different tracks with a presentation by Kimber, who is certified through Tracker Certification North America, and a variety of unique casts to investigate. Then they took a journey into the canyon, where they learned to look up, down, and all around them for signs of wildlife. They found the trails of bark beetles in fallen logs, a squirrel nest high in the crook of two branches, a lost downy feather attached to a twig, and even a collapsed tunnel likely once used by beavers.
One tip to take away: Before leaving for a hike, mark your bootprint by your car (if the ground permits), or use aluminum foil and leave it somewhere that’s easy to find. Search and rescue volunteers with expertise in tracking can use these prints to find you if you get lost.
The Perfect Bite: The Art of Crafting a Cheese Appetizer
What makes a perfect bite?
Emily Tkaczibson MALS ’26 says you should be looking for the “damn” moment—the combination of flavors that sends you to heaven.
For cheese appetizers, which she’s an expert on as a former cheese sommelier and cheese monger, Emily says you need to start with four key elements: cheese, of course, the star of the show; a base, or the vessel; compotes, or spreadables; and accoutrements, all the extras that add some fun to your appetizer.
In Emily’s Paideia class, attendees got to dream up their own perfect bite, deciding on a theme (location-based, season-based, for a party?), base (cracker, bread, pretzel?), cheese (brie, gouda, sheep milk?), compote (blueberry, strawberry, lemon curd?), and accoutrements (microgreens, pickled carrot, salami?).
Then students got to try some perfect bite combinations from plates Emily prepared. Options varied, making the possibilities endless. Attendees worked to find their “damn” moment. They tried blueberry jam spread on a wheat cracker, topped with seaside smoked cheddar and microgreens; lemon curd dolloped on a potato chip, with brie spread over top and a strawberry to finish it off; blue cheese on a corn cracker, topped with an apple and drizzled in honey. Some combos worked, some didn’t.
The final exam? For attendees to take what they learned home with them and begin crafting their perfect bite.
One tip to take away: Is something not working with your perfect bite, but you can’t quite figure it out? Add something acidic or salty, and that will usually fix it.
Doodling to De-Stress
One of the best antidotes for doomscrolling is actually quite simple, says Assistant Director of Disability Access Resources Maddie Butcher-Willon: doodling.
In her Paideia class, Doodling to De-Stress, students got to choose from a wide array of art supplies: cardstock and printer paper, acrylic markers and fine-tip Sharpies, watercolors and dual-brush tip pens, to follow along with her doodling tips.
First up was the classic zentangle, a meditative art form which uses repetitive simple strokes. Students started with any shape they wanted—rectangles, triangles, circles, clouds, hearts—and started by drawing a few on their pages. Then they continuously outlined each shape over and over again, until the page was filled with lines and curves and patterns.
Next, students tried a mosaic doodle. To do this, they drew a scribbly spiral on their page, as big or small or wild or tame as they wanted. Then, using different-colored markers or paints, they filled in the negative space of the spiral with shapes. Eventually, as they filled in all the gaps, it began to look like what the title suggests.
Last came neurographic art. This doodle involves drawing criss-cross squiggles all over a page, and then rounding out every corner where the lines meet, until the paper looks like neural pathways. Each space is then colored in, and patterns can be added for an extra flourish.
At the end of the class, students got to choose whichever doodling technique they liked best and get lost in the zen magic of the process.
One tip to take away: Doodling can actually help you focus better. Put on an audiobook or a podcast while you doodle, and you just might remember a lot more information than you normally would.