For Najiha, senior, early school years were difficult for her – her peers were not always so nice. “I was bullied.” Najiha recalls. “Since I only knew Spanish people bullied me for that, and that was a majority of elementary school – so I didn’t really have friends.” She has lived in Tucson her entire life, knowing only Spanish when she began school. Learning English wasn’t hard for her since she was so young at the time, so she was able to pick up the language quite quickly. She comments on how she is very to herself, so it sort of isolated her, but it was not necessarily bad, she was just “there.”

She is a self-taught artist and has never really taken art classes.  She took beginning art class her freshman year and is currently in AP art, although traditional classes are something she’s never done. She likes to draw anything, but her most favorite is drawing clothes. She says that she is undecided if she wants to pursue some sort of career with that involved, but she would like to do something in fashion.

Her biggest struggle with art would be drawing realistically; the type of art that she does isn’t realistic, so she doesn’t practice it often, thus causing a bit of a struggle. Her favorite medium is acrylic paint and she hates watercolor. She gets inspiration from her music, whether it’s classical or an album, she will draw whatever comes to mind. If she is drawing fashion designs she will often use reference books, color boards, and textures. “I can go to rocks and see the texture that it has or even think of a theme.” It can take long or short amounts of time to finish her pieces; she can spend all day creating or she can come back to it little by little. People have asked to buy her art, but laughing, she says she doesn’t do it because of the emotional attachments she has to her art so she doesn’t want to give them up.

In general, she wants her job to be creative. She is most likely going to major in financial business and linguistics. Linguistics is the study of language – something she is very interested in. She currently speaks English, Spanish, some Arabic, and some French. She eventually wants to learn Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian. She knows the basics of Japanese, but would like to be more fluent.

Recently, she has been thinking of selling prints of her art! So keep on the lookout, who knows maybe she’ll release a collection of prints or shirts.