EXPLORING CURIOSITIES

His mind everywhere, Nat Lurie ’23 sat down one night and began writing. He was working through some test cases for the Ethics Bowl, specifically a case involving an imagined elephant named Happy living in captivity. What might Happy’s moral rights and responsibilities be, and who are the actors responsible for upholding those established rights? What are moral rights, for that matter? Nat’s thoughts were a maze; the conclusions he would reach when he emerged were unknown. In this maze of thought, he wrote as if in a trance, following whatever path logic led him down, taking everything he had learned at Collegiate with him to help navigate.

He came away that night with a 10-page document that he and his team reviewed, each member discussing the logic of his arguments. He reveled in the process of sitting with a difficult idea, moving it around in his head to see all its angles. The Ethics Bowl, a Senior Capstone, gave him the space to apply himself and think deeply. “I enjoy those kinds of questions,” Nat says. “There’s a logic to it, and your logic could say something that you didn’t expect at the outset. Our team spent a lot of time, even outside of school, preparing and prepping, actively thinking about every possible analysis for a given case. The course was an intellectual challenge. It provided a space for me to use my brain in an analytical, logical way.”

It’s no wonder the program appealed to him. Nat describes his temperament as intellectually nitpicky. He’s a creative, multidimensional and multitalented Collegiate School Senior with an interest in math and theater. He can talk to you about the possible argumentative holes in using utilitarianism when speaking of ethics and morality and then, a few breaths later, he can tell you how using certain lighting in theater will imbue a scene with a particular kind of emotion. And when he talks about the geometry and trigonometry course he took with Amy Merchant, his voice, typically relaxed and level, will begin to speed up just slightly, excitement rippling over his words.

“I enjoy using my brain,” he says, humbly. “I mean, I like being actively productive, and productive to me means thinking. One of the main things that brings me happiness is thinking a lot in environments where I’m supposed to think a lot, which is why the Ethics Bowl was so appealing and quickly became one of my favorite classes for that reason.”

When he’s up in the catwalk in Oates Theater, he’s thinking productively in a different way. It’s another arena, for him, to sink into. As with any subject, he’s interested in nuance, how minor adjustments can change the bigger picture. “Theater — and, in particular, some of its more technical aspects such as lighting — in its own way is similar to how ethics and logic follow a certain combination of different things,” he says. “Theater has its own subtleties and its own art. In each production, there’s a need for different lighting to convey a number of emotions on stage. Some lighting is situational and communicates setting and time of day. Other lighting is more conceptual, dictating the atmosphere of the entire play. By just tweaking the angle of light or adjusting the color, everything can change.”

When Nat was in Middle School, his primary interest was English and language arts. In 2021, as a Sophomore, Nat received a Gold Medal and an American Voices Medal for a short story, which is one of the highest honors any student can receive from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. “The level of intellectual nitpicking you can do with language is fascinating,” Nat explains. “And I’ve always had a knack for writing essays because I can, again, follow a logical argument.”

But interests expand and wane, and Nat credits Collegiate’s teachers for helping him explore a range of passions. He has greater interest now in math than writing, but no matter the turns his pursuits take, there are opportunities for him to explore.

“In almost every class I’ve taken at Collegiate, you can see that the teachers are really excited to introduce you to what they’re teaching, and you become more engaged because of that,” he says. “The teachers have taught me a lot. And as soon as you show an interest in something, they can help guide you along a track and help you pursue that interest.”

When he was taking AP physics as a Junior with Greg Sesny, a class Nat had a natural gift for, Sesny, recognizing this skill, encouraged him to check out Collegiate’s robotics team. There was a place for Nat to apply what he was learning in class to something larger. “Mr. Sesny, one of the mentors on the robotics team, just figured I’d enjoy working on robotics,” Nat says. “He encouraged me to join, telling me that what we were learning in AP physics could be useful to apply to working on a robot. I don’t regret joining the team. I’ve had a lot of fun.”

The programs Collegiate offer serve to open students up to what can be done both in and outside a classroom. So when Nat is sitting and writing about Happy the elephant for the Ethics Bowl, he’s taking everything he’s been taught and channeling it into this 10-page case analysis. All of his interests have become focused on this one study. And he’s thrilled to be given the space to walk around and look at an idea.

“There is a diversity of thought offered here that is innately valuable to thinking,” he says. “I’ve kind of realized there’s a lot of things I want to do. And I’ve had the chance to do them all. Each of those things is something I’m passionate about, and I’ve become the best version of myself because I’ve been able to think about it all.”