Nina Goldman

Nina Goldman started drawing in second grade, and her passion for the arts has only increased. She has since experimented with many other forms of art, such as silk screening, print making, and sculpture. She enjoys trying many different mediums, but her favorites remain drawing and painting.

“I’m not totally sure why I gravitated so much towards [art], but I just really enjoyed it and really liked getting better at it,” said Nina. “It’s how I release energy and express myself.”

Nina believes that Berkeley High has helped her develop as both an artist and as a person. She explained that the Creative Arts class taught by Jaime Knight introduced her to many new art forms that she had never tried before.
“I was exposed to so much stuff from that class,” said Nina.

It wasn’t so easy for Nina to transition to Berkeley High. Goldman was in the School of Social Justice and Ecology for her freshman and sophomore years and had some trouble adjusting to her small school and to BHS as a whole.
But she took a class called Fresh Person Seminar during her freshmen year, and it helped her adjust and become familiar with her peers and her environment.

“We talked a lot about social problems and issues like racism, homophobia, sexism, ethnocentrism … I hadn’t talked about those things in a classroom setting and it was the first time I had [experience with] my peers, who were ethnically and racially very different from me,” said Nina. These discussions helped shape both Nina’s academic and social experiences, as they helped her bond with her new classmates and grow accustomed to BHS.

Nina was also on the crew team during her freshmen and sophomore years and the mountain biking club during her junior and senior years.

She has been part of Jewish Youth for Community Action (JYCA), a tightly–knit group of young people dedicated to social justice and youth empowerment.

Through JYCA, Nina has been involved with several community service projects, as well as leadership positions within the group.

She also spent the first semester of her junior year at Oxbow, a school of art and artist’s residency, in a semester program in Napa. She describes her time at Oxbow as very significant in her life.
Goldman will be attending Smith College in North Hampton, Massachusetts in the Fall of 2011, although she’s not sure what she will be studying.

“I’m really interested in a lot of things in the world, so I’m not totally sure about what I’m going to be studying there,” she said.

She is taking a year off between high school and college, but not to rest and relax. During her year off, she plans on traveling to Central America and Cuba.

“I’m going to study Spanish in Cuba and have all sorts of adventures,” said Goldman.

Photos:

• Nina Goldman