Hi! I'm Nathan!
I’m an educator with a background in the liberal arts and humanities, teen mentorship and wilderness education. A great deal of my life is devoted to great books, which I read 1:1 with teenagers and as a seminar lead for The Catherine Project . I also guide seasonal immersive programs with UWC Atlantic College and the Bay School of San Francisco. I grew up in the North Bay area with a strong connection to the natural world, and worked in regenerative farming and as a backpacking guide after high school. My teaching work is greatly inspired by five seasons leading wilderness programs with Back to Earth , which taught me that young people thrive when offered meaningful responsibilities and challenges. As an undergraduate I attended Deep Springs College, where I worked on the college farm, for the admissions committee, as the mechanics assistant, and as a peer counselor and student nurse. I also fell in love with the humanities, which have taken most of my time since. I went on to study literature at Columbia University, where my BA thesis on Milton won a prize, and at Freie Universität in Berlin, where I dropped out. I've recently earned an MPhil at Cambridge on the Gould Studentship at Trinity College. I live in North Macedonia with my wife Mishel.
Tutoring in the arts and humanities
I work with middle and high-schoolers who want to build confidence in their reading and writing abilities. Whether a student wants a stronger command over what they write, or wants to get more from what they read, I coach them to follow their instincts further. My ultimate goal is to help young people trust in their voice and learn the art of asking a good question.
My approach has two parts. First, to train deceptively simple skills: how to tighten sentences, organize a paragraph, and how to read and take stock of what you have read. Second, and more importantly, my goal is conversation. I engage seriously with a student's insights, serve as a mirror for their analytical process, and pose the questions that can strengthen it. I also work with students who are interested in approaching more complex reading - in anything from literature or poetry to philosophy and political theory - by progressing through a given text with them and discussing regularly. Recently, students have worked with me on these texts:
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Laozi, Daodejing
Alexandre Dumas, Count of Monte Cristo
Virginia Woolf, short prose
George Orwell, essays
Irene Nemirovsky, Suite Francaise
You can get in touch with me to schedule an introductory meeting at nathan[at]deepsprings.edu or +1 707-295-7547.
College Essay Mentorship
In addition to academic tutoring, I work with students who are writing (or preparing to write) their college essays. My goal is to help students take ownership of the application-writing process, as an opportunity to authentically articulate themselves and refine their thinking. Rather than a hassle of self-fashioning, I think the application writing process can be deeply rewarding, generative, and clarifying. What actually motivates me? Where do my curiosities actually point?
With experience working in highly-selective college admissions and mentoring teenagers at pivotal rite-of-passage moments, I hope to help students put a confident foot forward in their applications, and learn something about themselves in the process.
Some resources I like to use:
Hack the College Essay by John Dewis
The Deep Springs Writing Handbook by David Arndt
