Have You Met Rutgers-Newark?

It sounds like a movie script: A child born in the New Jersey suburbs moves to Malaysia for her dad’s job.  When she reaches middle-school age, she is sent to a British international school in Penang where she studies with students from around the world. She returns to Malaysia to attend a two-year program in a local college. She also models, and interns at a tourism website promoting Penang Island, learning photography, videography, web design, HTML, and writing. She is on the island when the horrendous 2004 tsunami strikes; she and her family are unharmed but mourn the loss of friends.

If it were a movie, the heroine would never leave Penang, but Naina Kamath is not a movie character. In her real life, the locale shifted back to New Jersey when Naina was 18.  She then pursued the passion ignited by her internship, enrolling in the journalism program at R-N. “Friends told me they loved Rutgers-Newark.  Since I wanted an urban experience, as well as a diverse campus, it was an easy choice,” she says.

Naina keeps busy writing for The Observer, as well as running a blog and working on the Scarlet Magazine, a Rutgers-Newark publication she helped found. Despite her hectic schedule, she maintains a 4.0 grade point average.

In a sequel to the screenplay, the young woman, who plans a photojournalism career in the fashion industry, would find a job at a New York magazine. In this case, the screenplay and real life coincide, since Naina is a Fashion Intern at Vanity Fair magazine for the Spring '12 semester.