I'm Nate, a junior from Memphis studying international relations with minors in economic policy and anthropology. Memphis made me, and travel keeps remaking me. I've been lucky enough to see a lot of the world, most recently a spring at NYU Paris. My travels and my upbringing feed each other: every place I go deepens my appreciation for home, and home gives me a reason to keep chasing somewhere new. It's also why international relations never feels abstract to me. In the city, you'll find me playing soccer or basketball, trying a new restaurant a friend swears by, or wherever I can find live music that night. When I'm not playing, I'm usually watching. Being a lifelong Grizzlies fan in a city still buzzing from the Knicks' championship is its own kind of character building. And yet, I'll find a way to defend my roster to anyone who brings it up. I picked NYU for the city and stayed for what the school let me build in it. If you're deciding whether this place is for you, I'll tell you what's been great, what's been hard, and what I'd do differently. No question is off limits.

Hometown

Memphis, TN

Major(s)

International Relations

Minor(s)

Economic Policy; Anthropology

Clubs, organizations & involvement

NYU Liberal Studies Dean's Circle Scholar Stern Political Economy Exchange NYU International Relations Society NYU Politics Club International Business Association Campus Recreation Intramural Sports

Describe your college experience

Academically, the transition was smoother than I expected. I went to an IB school in Memphis, so college-style workloads and time management were already second nature. I also graduated early and completed a study abroad program before enrolling, which meant I'd taken college classes before ever setting foot on campus. The honest answer is that the bigger adjustment was everything else. I was eighteen, adjusting to college and to New York City at the same time, two immense tasks in their own right. The hardest skill my first semester wasn't anything in a classroom. It was learning to balance taking advantage of everything the city offers with giving myself permission to rest, because burning out in New York is easy and nobody warns you. Once I stopped treating the city like a checklist and started treating it like something I'd have four years to grow into, everything settled. Now the city feels less like a place I moved to and more like a fundamental part of my college experience.

Tip for future students

Talk to your professors outside of class. It sounds simple, but those conversations opened more doors than anything else I've done here, including an invitation to a hearing at the EU's Court of Justice in Luxembourg. I get nervous vocalizing questions in a full classroom. I've always been the back-of-the-class-sitting, note-taking, listening type. But I know I'm at my best one-on-one, so I leaned on that: staying after class, asking a professor to expand on something she'd said in passing, asking about her own career. The broader tip is to know your strengths and build from them. But you must do so honestly, because knowing what you're good at also shows you what you're avoiding. I'm still working on speaking up in the rooms where silence costs me. Start from your strengths. Don't let yourself be boxed in by the comfort they bring.

Favorite class

The European Union: History and Politics, taught by Professor Imola Streho at NYU Paris. I cannot speak highly enough of Professor Streho. She taught the EU as something happening now, not just a set of institutions to memorize. Outside of class, she was always open for a coffee chat, and those conversations evolved into the best part of the course. They ended with her inviting me to Luxembourg to sit in on a hearing at the EU's Court of Justice, an ongoing case where Italy is suing Austria over Alpine trade routes. I was a sophomore, watching the exact thing we'd studied all semester get argued in front of me. I've enjoyed plenty of my classes at NYU, but only one has ever put me in the world I was studying.

Career goals

I'm studying international relations with minors in economic policy and anthropology, and the questions that hold my attention are about decisions: who makes them, and who bears what follows. The career I want is field-based. I want to live somewhere, learn it from the ground, and translate that granular understanding upward into how institutions read a region. That might mean a think tank, an NGO, or a research institute; the label matters less to me than the method. I'm getting a head start now. While studying at NYU Paris, I began a research paper on how the costs of EU foreign policy land on ordinary French households, and I'm now revising it with the goal of publishing in an undergraduate journal this year. It started as a class assignment, and it grew because I kept pulling on the thread after the semester ended. NYU puts the pieces on the table, but it's on you to pick them up and make something of them.

Ideal way to spend a free night

A night with friends runs something like this: pickup soccer at sunset, good food after, then back to somebody's apartment to watch basketball. We have a fantasy NBA league, so four games on the TV at once is just a standard weeknight. And if it's really an ideal night, I'm on aux. I grew up in Memphis in a music-loving family, and sharing music stuck with me; there's real joy in introducing someone to something they might carry with them on their own. But some of my favorite nights are the ones entirely to myself: I take a ball to Pier 40 after the crowds have cleared and hit free kicks alone with some of the best views in the city. Then home, where my version of winding down is YouTube video essays on politics, economics, whatever's caught me lately. Last night it was quantum computing and the US Space Force.

High school or secondary school

Lausanne Collegiate School

Favorite spot on campus

The basketball courts in the Paulson Center. Maybe not the expected answer, but being able to walk downstairs from class and play pickup was one of my favorite things about freshman year. I met some of my best friends on those courts. Because NYU doesn't have a traditional campus, and the city is enormous, much of the experience is finding the spaces built around things you already care about. For me that was a basketball court. Whatever yours is, the city has it.