Gulliver Prep senior Nicole Nixon is a National Merit Scholarship Finalist. She’s also the author of two books available on Amazon.
She has written and published two books -The Fire Within series – about a cat that lives in London and all the adventures he has there.
She started writing the books at age 12 and finished them at 17.
She says she always has a bunch of projects going. In fact, she’s written a third book but hasn’t published it yet.
Nixon is a member of the Gulliver Scuba Club, which does a lot of environmentally important community service like restoring our coral reefs.
She goes diving with the club as often as possible.
“I’ve been in Scuba Club since freshman year,” she says. “I used to live in Bermuda. The first thing I did when I got to Gulliver was sign up for that club.”
Club members engage in coral restoration off Miami Beach and sometimes in the keys.
“They give us a lesson on how to do it. And then we go on the boat,” she says.
She has also trained to become a rescue diver. She loves scuba diving.
“It’s the best thing. It’s very cool to be able to breathe underwater,” she says. “Underwater looks like nothing on land. You can swim through reefs or wrecks. It’s very pretty under water in a different way than on land.”
At school, Nixon participates in the new peer tutoring program.
“I do a lot of that after school with math and physics,” she says.
At peer tutoring she works with one student at a time. She generally spends an hour or two after school tutoring, working with students from freshmen to seniors. She tutors one senior in Calculus AB but mostly tutors in physics.
She also volunteers at afterschool program at The Barnyard in Coconut Grove, working with children. It’s a community service program through the National English Honor Society.
“I help them with their homework and when they are done, we go play soccer, or whatever they want to do,” she says. “Sometimes it can be hard, because they don’t want to do their homework, they want to go out and play. But it’s fun.”
In her free time, Nixon water skis competitively.
She finished sixty-sixth in the US and second in the Florida state championships in her age group.
She also competes at numerous competitions in Florida with her ski club, Greater Miami Waterskiing Club.
No matter where she goes to college, she expects to continue to water ski, but probably not competitively, especially if she goes to a cold weather city.
“I would do it during the summer,” she says. “Waterskiing is a family thing. I don’t think I’d be doing it competitively, but I’d be doing it for fun.”
At Gulliver, Nixon is a member of the Cum Laude Society, the Spanish Honor Society, Rho Kappa, National Honor Society, National English Honor Society, and Mu Alpha Theta.
She’s also in an engineering class. This year, they are focused on renovating a Volkswagen Van.
“We are trying to convert it from gas to electric,” she says.
Nicole was recently accepted to one of her two top choices, Northwestern. She’s also been accepted in the University of Florida, Northeastern, William and Mary, Colby and Lafayette. She’s been offered scholarships to at least two of the colleges. She expects to hear from her other top choice, Princeton, in late March.
“I want to major in math,” she says. “Possibly to become an actuary.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
