Nona Golan

Name: Nona Golan

College: Merrill

Department: Anthropology

What Award/ Scholarship did you receive? Dean’s Award

What year do you expect to graduate? 2022

Where do you call home? My community is my home, and they are spread out between Irvine, San Diego (CA), Haifa, and Yaffa (PA-IL). 

With all of the choices for college, what made UC Santa Cruz stand out? It has been a unique experience not only with faculty and friends, but also with the life of the coastal forest ecology. UCSC is mingled within these ecologies, which I had never had the chance to live among before. I feared the forest when I first came, it was dark and looming. It became a place of reminders that life is in motion, and gave me a sense of proportion and context within more-than-human places.

With all of the choices for college, what made UC Santa Cruz stand out? It has been a unique experience not only with faculty and friends, but also with the life of the coastal forest ecology. UCSC is mingled within these ecologies, which I had never had the chance to live among before. I feared the forest when I first came, it was dark and looming. It became a place of reminders that life is in motion, and gave me a sense of proportion and context within more-than-human places.

What is your field of focus? I focused my Anthropology major on people and how they shape/are shaped by their environment. My thesis honed in on wetland terraformation and Bedouin displacement as an Imperial project for producing a nation-state, and how infrastructures of production reproduce social and ecological harm.

What do you hope to do once you graduate from UC Santa Cruz? I hope to change my mind a couple times, to express myself, and to extend my curiosity to new fields. Before applying to graduate school in the Fall this year, or next year, I hope to sit for a while and have nothing to do. I will leave home and travel to be with friends and family. I will also hone in on music and my physical/mental health. I hope to get meaningful work with people and communities who inspire me as well, prior to schooling, which will lead me to ask contextualized questions in graduate school.

What is one memorable moment that stands out for you as a student here? Before starting university, I did Wilderness Orientation with the Recreation Department at UCSC. We climbed up 2nd Recess in the Sierra Nevada, 11,000 feet and a group of 10 students and 2 rec-leaders.  One day, before the final leg of the ascent to the peak, we did a solo – fasting, alone, in silence, for 24 hours. I was trying to sit in silence, but a fly kept buzzing and landing on me. After angrily shoo-ing it for a while, I let it be, and it finally sat in silence on me, and I was shook. The bathrooms at Cowell are disgusting! 

What is your one piece of advice for incoming students about life at UC Santa Cruz? You are capable on levels you do not yet know. Be with those who inspire you and find those levels together.

How will this scholarship impact your academic life /research? It will likely get me a better chance at going to a graduate school that will allow me to expand on my understanding of self and world.