("Cocaine" by Jimi Hendrix)
- Hey, my name is Nathan and I'm from Melbourne, Australia.
I'm a student at the University of Pennsylvania
and I'm a freshman.
I'm in the College of Arts and Sciences,
but I'm planning on doing an uncoordinated dual degree
between the College and Wharton.
("Cocaine" by Jimi Hendrix)
Normally, everyday I wake up about 30 minutes before class
and I get changed, brush my teeth, roll out of bed,
and then, my class, Spanish, is just over here.
We're just across the road.
And right after that, I have economics, normally.
Sometimes I've got an hour break
until my writing seminar class.
And
I normally end my days at around one o'clock.
- So where are we now?
- So, we're in the quad.
It's combination of three college houses:
Riepe, Ware and Fisher.
Pretty much where all the freshman live.
It's meant to be the hub of the freshman experience.
- Right. - Yeah.
- [Interviewer] And so, what classes are you taking?
- So, I just came from Econ, so I'm taking
Econ One, Market Economics.
I'm taking Spanish.
I'm taking a writing seminar and this
community service course, called Urban Asthma.
- Cool. - Yeah.
- And so what do you ultimately want to major in?
- So, I'm not too sure about my majors yet,
but I'm looking to do a uncoordinated dual degree
with the College of Arts and Sciences,
which is what I am in already,
and Wharton School of Business.
- Cool. - I don't know
what I wanna major in,
but I kinda know what I want to do.
- Sure. - In the future,
which is, inner-social impact consulting
in the lines of environmental consulting
or community development consulting.
I think that doing a dual degree between College
and Wharton, I guess, is the perfect way
to do that sort of best of both worlds thing.
- Sure.
- Helping people but also doing what you wanna do
as a career.
- Right. - Yeah.
- It all sort of, the Wharton side will almost
equip you with the business
- Pretty much, yeah. - Side you need, and then,
but then you'll still get sort of a liberal arts base.
- Of course, yeah. - Great.
(upbeat electronic music)
(electrical orchestra music)
- We're at Lyn's food truck,
one of the most popular breakfast sandwich trucks
on Spruce Street.
And
you'll have lines of about 30, 40 people coming after class
and the lady actually never writes down any orders.
She just memorizes everyone's orders.
Everyone's faces.
- So she knows your order.
- Yeah, so like, - What do you order?
- My order is a long roll
with sausage, egg, cheese and bacon.
- Yeah.
- So if I come back tomorrow, she'll be like,
"Sausage, egg, bacon, cheese and--"
- She's on it.
- "And a long roll."
And she'll be like, "Yeah, all good."
- Perfect. - Yeah.
- Alright, let's hop in line.
(mellow electronic music)
- So we're in the courtyard of Huntsman Hall.
It's a pretty nice study area.
It's pretty much where all the kids
from the Wharton School of Business go to to study
and just hang out.
- Okay, great. - Yeah.
- So there's a lot of Wharton classrooms here
but also a lot of meetings rooms.
- Yeah, so
there's a lot of (mumbles)
so group study rooms where people go study.
Some people have conferences in them,
like online conferences.
It's also where all the Wharton MBA students come.
So just over there in front of us
is the Wharton MBA cafe.
And so it's just a mix of undergraduate students and
master degree students as well.
I have a club meeting for Global Impact Collaborative here.
It's one of the consulting groups at Penn.
It's a social impact focused consulting group
that, well actually, a bunch of social enterprises and
so you are essentially assigned teams
about four people and you get a project leader.
And you work on various, I guess, social enterprises.
So the one that I'm working on is called WISE Kenya,
stands for Women in Sustainable Enterprises in Kenya.
And so essentially what we're trying to do is that
in the Lake Victoria Region of Kenya,
there's a, I guess, a fisher folk, sort of, village there
with mostly women and they, during the off-seasons,
when there's not as many fish,
they obviously can't get that much fish and sell them,
so they don't have that much profit in those times.
What we're trying to do is, essentially,
help them diversify and promote eco-tourism in the area.
It's just essentially helping them in the business world
of their living.
- Cool, that's awesome.
So is that, why is Kenya, is that
a project that you'll be working on
throughout the entire year?
Or just the semester?
Or how does that work?
- So I think how GI actually works is that
you pretty much do it
until they don't really need you anymore.
- Sure, so you can see the project through.
- But I know for certain that most clubs
just do semester-long projects,
but I think GI is a bit different in the sense that
you could be working in it for a year, if you wanted to.
(mellow electronic music)
- So where are we?
What is this long walkway?
- So this is Locust Walk.
It's pretty much the iconic walkway
of the University of Pennsylvania.
It's where all your frat houses are.
All your class,
most of your class buildings are.
Most of the larger buildings in the school
are located on this walk.
- So I guess, overall, what is social life,
what's night life like at Penn for you?
- So, for me,
well, I guess for every Penn student,
there's always gonna be something happening
every other day.
If you wanted to party every single day,
you definitely could.
- You could make it happen. - Yeah.
There's something happening in a basement somewhere here
or in a rooftop somewhere here.
- On any given night.
But, of course, on your Thursday, Friday, Saturdays,
you're gonna have the biggest events.
Then normally off campus, over there,
anywhere from 400-500 people in one house at a time.
If you wanna
have a social life in Penn,
it's not really all about fraternities and sororities.
For sure, I think only 30 or 20% of students at Penn
join Greek life.
So there's definitely other opportunities
like for example, clubs and extracurriculars at Penn,
which
a large number of people at Penn join.
I'd say almost all students get involved
in five, six things.
You have consulting groups, you have social impact groups,
you have cultural groups.
In all those groups, you'll meet a number of people.
Like people on the board, other freshman
that are joining as well.
You would have to try pretty hard
to isolate yourself from people in this school.
- Sure. - Yeah.
(mellow electronic music)
I'd have to day that coming to America,
I sort of had the knowledge
that people are a lot more ambitious here.
But coming to Penn, I didn't really know
how ambitious Penn students would be.
It sort of hit me, how pretty professional
this school is and how driven every single student is.
If you come here, almost all the students know
what they wanna do, what they wanna major in.
What they don't want to do.
It's such a big shock.
It's not a bad shock because it sort of drives,
especially me to sort of find exactly
what I wanna do myself as well.
It opens your eyes to new career paths
that you didn't really consider
because you heard someone else say that,
"Oh, I wanna do this."
Don't focus too much on academics.
Whilst they are important,
I think the thing that universities really look for are
who you are, what you do, what you offer to their university
and because there are thousands of really really smart kids
who apply every year and don't get in.
That's purely just by the fact that the university
can't really see a place where they fit in
in their community.
The biggest advice would be to work out what you offer
to the university and to really develop that.
(mellow electronic music)
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I'm stuck.
I'm stuck, I can't get,
I can't get down.