An alum's reflection - Nina Marks

This “Speech of Self Introduction” was written by Tamarack Alum, Nina Marks for her Nicolet Communications class.

Nina with Ms. Rose in kindergarten

Hello, my name is Nina Marks and I grew up in an educational system that valued nature over technology and social media. // I grew up in a Waldorf school, an unconventional education style based on unique principles of creativity and spirituality. We had the same teacher from first to eighth grade, and they taught us every subject, except for foreign languages. / We used to make our own textbooks, // we would hear a lecture and paraphrase it and then, write it in cursive with a fountain pen, all while including some sort of personalized artistic touch. We were graded on the penmanship of our work as well as the creativity and quality of the drawings that we did based on our individual skill sets. This is the structure that I was accustomed to, / and it cultivated my creativity and love for the arts / as well as imagination. And don’t get me wrong, // I always bash this school saying “damn that school was weird” or “I can’t believe I went there.” And in all fairness, it was weird, but I would not exchange this experience for anything. Growing up at this school allowed me to explore the recesses of my ever expanding imagination. In addition, my mother is a visual artist and my dad is a musician. They both began exposing to me their individual artistic tastes at a very young age. Anything from Amy Winehouse, to Rush, to learning about famous artists and practically spending all of my free time in some museum in the Milwaukee area.

My upbringing in Waldorf education and both my parents being artists, has heavily shaped who I am and the imagination that fuels my creative endeavors today. You know, I could stand up here and talk to you for 2-3 minutes about how my mom used to take me to art museums, and the symphony, about how my dad would always bring me along to his insanely loud prog rock concerts. And hey, / those things really did give me an appreciation of the arts, but I think I can do you one better to understand the environment in which I was raised. The other day, I went back to my old neighborhood on the Eastside and visited the park that my school would take us to everyday. I went back to this old park // and the thing that amazed me was how tiny everything was. // When I was younger I remember playing every day in that park. The hill there felt so much higher, the field felt so much bigger, the park felt like the entire world to me, and there was SO MUCH room for imagination in this tiny park. I was allowed to be a kid who could look at a play structure / and see a looming, turreted castle built from stone, // at a hill and see a mountain snow capped mountain full of rolling waves of green trees , // who could imagine entire WORLDS in this tiny pocket of the city. I was allowed a safe haven away from social media, and the vicious cycle of comparison and drama. I was allowed to just be a kid in a generation where it feels like children are forced to grow up too fast. A kid with an imagination that could bring a tiny playground on the east side of Milwaukee to life. And whenever I feel like I am losing myself, I return to that school or that neighborhood and I am reminded of where I came from // and I see the world through the eyes of the child that saw the entire world filled with possibilities. If I ever lose myself, I return to my roots and I am reminded of the child who was capable of creating anything from nothing. When I allow myself to create to my full extent, I become the best version of myself and I have my childhood to thank for that.

Nina Marks, graduated from Tamarack in 2018. She will be graduating from Nicolet High School in the Spring of 2022, she is looking to take a gap year to establish residency in Washington state. She is intending to study journalism at the University of Washington.