Beachwood Patch Whiz Kid of the Week Monica Arkin

Age: 18

School:

Accomplishment: Was co-president of the Jewish Student Union last year and is spending her summer before her first year in college as a camp counselor

Key to Awesomeness: Monica Arkin isn’t doing what most kids do the summer before their first year of college.

Instead of weekly trips to Kmart and Target for bedding, stereos and maybe a new laptop, Arkin is leading the young attendees at B’nai B’rith Beber Camp in Wisconsin during her first year as a counselor.

“This is my eighth year on camp and I couldn’t imagine spending my summers any other way,” she said. “This is the best place there is.”

She feels at home there, despite being in the “middle of nowhere,” as she describes it, located about 90 minutes north of Chicago in a town called Mukwonago. She enjoys it so much she wants to spend at least the next two summers at the camp because third-year counselors are given director responsibilities.

“It’s the whole atmosphere, the idea that no matter what you try everyone supports you,” she explained. “Everyone can be themselves. Everyone can be comfortable in their own skin. Beachwood is the same way, but there’s something different about camp with limited adults and all kids where everyone just opens up.”

Being part of that closeness was what inspired her to become co-president of the Jewish Student Union at Beachwood High School in only the group’s second year. She hopes to help shape its agenda for years to come. The group began as the Israeli Culture Club, which she joined as a sophomore. The next year the group got a new adviser, Rabbi Arieh Friedner, who is also the Cleveland director of the Jewish teen group, NCSY.

The group changed its name to Jewish Student Union and with it a new mission: To educate others about Israel and Judaism as a culture.

Arkin became the new group’s communications director and helped coordinate once- or twice-monthly meetings to discuss the curriculum. She was chosen by the co-presidents that year to help lead the group when she became a senior.

“I think we made a lot of progress,” she said. “It’s still not where Arieh envisions it to be, or where I envision it to be, but I know the presidents next year will do more work and it’ll get better and better as time goes on.”

She said she hopes the group reaches out to the community beyond Beachwood High School so that the entire city and maybe even beyond can gain an appreciation for Jewish culture.

“I wanted to offer the Jewish community at my high school the same sense of community I feel at my Jewish camp,” she said. “We all have the same Jewish background — it doesn’t matter if we’re reform, conservative, orthodox, observant, non-observant — that’s a bond and we build from that bond and that’s what our community is based on: Jewish values.”

Before graduating from Beachwood High, Arkin was also on the girls' lacrosse team, a staff writer for the school newspaper, The Beachcomber, member of the school’s library club and National Honor Society, as well as on the leadership planning committee for the school’s leadership conference.

Arkin will attend the University of Michigan in the fall after only two weeks off from camp. She hopes to major in psychology and afterward do something in the field of early childhood cognitive development.