GREY CITY

SG President.Truman Scholar.

Gates Scholar.Marathon runner.

Boxer.Entrepreneur.

Community servant.

Greg Nance.Page 6

Keep calm and carry on: a Q&A with Sian Beilock

This associate psychology profes-sor knows how to keep cool under pressure—she's been studying it for over a decade. Learn how not to choke.

Page 4

A funny thing happenedto the open forum

It used to be that you would see students debating President Zimmer on how to run the school. You don't now, because you don't go to open forums anymore. Page 2

IN THIS ISSUEGREY CITY

1212 East 59th Street

Chicago, IL 60637

phone: (773) 834-1611

Editor@ChicagoMaroon.com

www.chicagomaroon.com/grey-city

Jordan HollidayAsher Klein

Michael Lipkin

Jake Grubman

Hunter BuckworthMonika Lagaard

Holly LawsonTara Nooteboom

Douglas Everson

EDITORS

MANAGINGEDITOR

COPY EDITORS

DESIGN

The GREY CITY JOURNAL ran as a weekly supple-

ment to the CHICAGO MAROON from 1968 to 1993.

In its new incarnation, GREY CITY seeks to delve

into larger issues affecting the University of Chi-

cago campus and its community. The magazine

is produced by CHICAGO MAROON staff members

and runs every academic quarter.

The CHICAGO MAROON's quarterly magazine. March 8, 2011

DARREN LEOW/GREY CITY

Man on a mission

6 CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY | March 8, 2011

Greg Nance always says hi.

Walk with him for a minute

or two—across the quad,

th rough Henry Crown ,

down a hallway—and he’ll

wave at a half-dozen people, calling each

of them by name and asking how they are.

He’ll ask about some activity he knows

they’re involved in, or when they’ll be up

for grabbing coffee or a beer. It’s almost

impossible to tell whether he’s talking to

one of his best friends or someone he met a

couple days ago at a Student Government

(SG) event.

Whatever he has on h i s p la te , SG

President Nance says he always tries to

make time for meeting with people who

are looking for his advice or want his help.

One of his close friends, third-year Shashin

Chokshi, says Nance doesn’t discriminate

in writing his daily to-do lists: Just as he

writes down action items for expand-

ing Rising Phoenix Debate, his nonprofit

which teaches debate in high schools, he’ll

add a reminder to hang out with a friend. If

something doesn’t get checked off his list,

he adds it to the list the next day, and the

next, until it gets done.

Nance keeps four notebooks: one for

daily goals, one for journaling, one for SG,

and one for entrepreneurial and profes-

sional activities. He reads me a Winston

Churchill quote he wrote at the front of

one of the notebooks: “Success is not final,

failure is not fatal: it is the courage to con-

tinue that counts.” As he reads these half-

memorized, inspirational quotes, his eyes

light up, and he looks at me, hoping I’ll be

as inspired by them as he is.

Chokshi, with whom Nance founded

Moneythink, a nonprofit that teaches

financial literacy and entrepreneurship to

high school students, says Nance doesn’t

differentiate between making connections

and making friends. “He’s always semi-

professional—in a good way—even if you’re

talking to him just in a friendship context.”

But like many of his friends and his fam-

ily, Chokshi describes Nance as “genuine”

and “down to earth.” “It’s always a pitch in

many ways, but really genuine as well... It’s

always like, ‘Oh I’m really passionate about

this, you should be too,’” Chokshi says.

“He’ll pitch you equally on hanging out

and having beers with you.”

On one typical day two Mondays ago,

Nance wakes up at 7:30 a.m., sends e-mails

for Moneythink and SG (he says he sends

50-100 e-mails a day), reviews readings for

a take-home test in a Russian politics class

he has in a couple days, runs at the gym for

two hours, has lunch with former under-

graduate liaison to the Board of Trustees

Daniel Kimmerling (A.B. ’10) to discuss

his plans for Cambridge, reads some of

Managing Change, plays the computer game

Galcon for 15 minutes, goes to his B.A. col-

loquium (Nance is writing on China’s naval

development and America’s response),

grabs dinner with another Moneythink

leader and his girlfriend, goes to a hospital

to share his goal-setting methods with kids

who have sickle-cell anemia, and research-

es his B.A. on Twitter (his new favorite

information source).

Nance concludes the day with a 10 p.m.

workout at Henry Crown and has agreed

to take me along. The sixteen-mile run

that morning was his big workout for the

day and he’s just returning for a bit of

conditioning. We do some ab work, then

some warm-up laps around the track, and

he generously keeps pace with me until

we sprint the final stretch, at which point

he breaks away and cheers me on once he

finishes. Then he teaches me how to shad-

owbox. Afterwards, he stops by Bartlett

for some late-night dining before heading

home to his room at Delta Upsilon (DU),

where he lives in the bedroom once occu-

pied by novelist and U of C dropout Kurt

Vonnegut (A.M. ’71).

Six feet tall and 152 pounds, with wavy

brown hair that’s always a bit disheveled,

Nance, who usually wears slightly wrinkled

khakis, boat shoes with socks, and a wrin-

kled polo or t-shirt, still looks a lot like the

class clown, runner, and nerdy debate kid

he was in high school. It’s hard to believe

Nance is any good at boxing, but as a wel-

terweight at the Chicago Boxing Club on

South 35th Street and East Halsted Avenue,

Nance says big guys often don’t realize he’s

got the quick reflexes and determination to

rapidly turn the tables in his favor. “They’re

so angry, they get really distracted from

the purpose. I sit back, I play defense, and

when they’re totally exhausted, I go to

work like it’s my day job.” Nance, who has

exercise-induced asthma and is often much

smaller than his competitors, says much of

his athletic success is about “mental sharp-

ening.”

Nance started boxing when he was

nine or ten, as part of his parents’ plan to

channel Nance and his brother’s constant

fighting into something more productive.

He also runs marathons. His first was the

Chicago Marathon in October 2009, and

he ran the Cleveland Marathon last May,

coming in at 3:06.46—74th on the men’s

side. Nance is currently training for the

Southern Indiana Classic Marathon by run-

ning 20 to 25 miles a week, and he’s hoping

his cross-training—boxing, aqua-jogging,

stationary biking, and core work—wil l

improve his time further.

But most students know Nance not for

his athletic accomplishments, but because

he ’ s SG pres ident , or maybe for the

awards he’s won. Nance boasts a résumé

that makes businesses and admissions

panels drool: president of SG, founder of

Moneythink, Merrill Lynch intern, Teach

for America admit, winner of both the

Gates-Cambridge and the Truman scholar-

ships. He tutors chess and is developing

two startups besides Moneythink: Rising

Phoenix Debate and Chicago Got Game, a

summer basketball camp he founded.

Despite a passion for “weird factoids”

and an impressive knowledge of dinosaurs,

Nance says his aspirations when he was

younger were mostly in sports, and later

debate. Playing baseball, soccer, basketball,

and football as a kid and cross country,

track, tennis, and baseball in high school,

Nance was a competitor who wanted to

win at sports and not much else. A middle

child, he was flanked by an older sister

who excelled in athletics and a brother just

14 months younger than him who Nance

describes as “whip-smart.” Nance didn’t

learn how to read until he was six. He

lisped, was pigeon-toed and small.

“I learned determination very young,

because in order to be adequate at stuff, I

would have to try much harder,” he says.

“I remember not being that fast, but when

lunchtime started I would grab an apple,

eat it, and run around the track all recess.”

The highlight of his elementary athletic

career came during a first-grade football

game: He was the quarterback and there

were two minutes left during recess. The

teams were tied, and a bigger kid was rush-

ing him. He signalled a teammate to run

right; Nance faked a pass to him, headed

left and made, as he remembers it, a “mad

waddle for the end zone.”

Nance grew up on Bainbridge Island,

an island outside Seattle with one of the

highest qualities of living in the U.S., and

Nance’s parents often told him how lucky

he was to receive a great public education—

his predominantly white, wealthy home-

town imposes a five percent levy on itself

to support the schools. But he was held

back in math in eighth grade, often brought

home Cs and Ds on his math tests, and

Nance says the value of academics didn’t

click until he got to college. Still, his fam-

ily says it was always clear that he was

ambitious. “From the time he was a little

kid, he’s been a guy that’s been driven to

do something. I think when he was very

young—this is not uncommon, particularly

in boys—he wanted to do it in sports, he

wanted to make it in baseball,” says his

father, Mike. But Nance wasn’t big enough,

and for a long time was the twelfth player

on his pee wee team. “He never blossomed

into the standout star I knew he wanted to

be,” Mike says. Nance continued to play

sports in high school, excelling in track, in

which his 4x400 relay team lost the state

championship by 4/10 of a second, but also

funneled his energies into student govern-

ment and debate.

As freshman class vice president, one

of Nance’s responsibilities was to help

write and perform a homecoming skit. He

spent hours writing and rehearsing the skit

with a group, but an older student govern-

ment representative pulled the plug on

the microphone. The entire student body

booed Nance and the other performers,

and Nance figured he had to make up for

it somehow. That night, at the homecom-

ing game, Nance, wearing a ski mask and a

Speedo, streaked across the football field.

By senior year, Greg had a 3.18 GPA

(he would graduate 185th out of about 385

students) but had racked up a number of

major debate trophies. He had acceptance

letters from the University of Washington,

which gave him a large scholarship; West

Point; and the University of Chicago. He

visited West Point and, inspired by his

grandfathers, strongly considered attend-

Nanceworks the body

I would go out and I would slam 40

beers a weekend. Every weekend, my

first and second years.

by Ella ChristophMATT BOGEN/GREY CITY

7CHICAGO MAROON | GREY CITY | March 8, 2011

ing. His father’s father fought in World War

II and was one of the first Marines to land

on Iwo Jima, while his mother’s father was

a naval SeaBee who saw action throughout

the Pacific theater.

But after visiting the U of C and staying

with an acquaintance who was a brother

at DU, Nance was confident he wanted to

attend. His father had made enough money

to pay for a private school education large-

ly through investing in stocks, but knew

it would be a challenge for the family and

didn’t want it to go to waste on a young

man who had yet to put any effort into his

schoolwork. “For a week I had to sit and

say, ‘Oh my god, can I do this?’” Nance

recalls. “I’m coming off this really lacklus-

ter high school career where I achieved

a good amount in athletics and debate,

but academically I was nothing at all. So I

made a commitment, I promised my dad,

I’m going to do my best, I’m going to give

it my all, I’m going to put in the work, and

that difference—attitude is everything.”

Nance has done well at the U of C,

major ing in pol i t ica l sc ience with an

international relations focus. He became

an active member of Blue Chips and was

elected external relations officer of the RSO

spring of his first year. He ran track fall and

winter quarters of his first year, played

rugby in the spring and fall, and started

rowing winter of his second year. As a first

year, Nance was elected to College Council

(CC). Nance says being part of CC was

mostly a negative experience. He said the

organization had a culture of complacency

and accomplished l itt le . Afterward he

swore off SG, planning to do more through

other channels.

Nance also started to explore Chicago

and recognize the disparities around him.

Struck by the stark inequality and segrega-

tion, he felt compelled to do something

about it . Hoping to put his own skills

to use, he founded Moneythink, recruit-

ing brothers from DU and other Blue

Chips members to the organization. As

Moneythink grew—the organization now

claims nine chapters across the country—

Nance realized successful mentors could

help the program expand. Despite his

promise to himself to swear off SG, Nance

decided to run for undergraduate liaison

to the Board of Trustees, which he saw as

an opportunity to connect with powerful

businesses-people who could potentially

become his mentors. Through a host of

networking efforts, Moneythink’s advi-

sory board now includes Sam Beard, who

created and chaired programs developed

under each of the last seven presidents of

the United States, and Steven Biedermann,

investment port fol io manager for the

Chicago Public Schools.

In order to keep up with his schoolwork

and extracurriculars and party hard, Nance

had sacrificed sleep, averaging four to

four-and-a-half hours a night. He drank

and smoked marijuana regularly, and as

a fraternity brother, Nance says, alcohol

and drugs were readily available. “I would

go out and I would slam 40 beers a week-

end. Every weekend, my first and second

years,” he says. (A DU spokesman said it

has a zero tolerance policy on drugs and

alcohol.)

In April 2009, Nance took a pamphlet

advertising Cornerstone Baptist Church

f rom a woman on the s idewalk , cur-

rently located on East 55th Street and

South University Avenue at the Lutheran

School of Theology at Chicago. Curious,

he attended the Easter service, where he

met Pastor Courtney Lewis. Nance was

familiar with evangelical Christianity—his

grandmother used to give him candy for

memorizing Bible passages—but he only

considered himself a Sunday Christian, one

who doesn’t think about religion except at

church. While his parents had brought the

family to various church services growing

up, today his siblings don’t consider them-

selves Christian. Nance remembers May 10,

2009 clearly, a “sunny Saturday” a month

after he had taken the Cornerstone flyer: It

was the day he says he was saved. “Pastor

Lewis came to DU and showed me the

route to salvation, and we sat down with

John in Romans,” he says. “That was the

day I was like, I’m turning things around.”

Nance goes to church at Cornerstone

Baptist regularly and is in a Wednesday

night Bible study group where Lewis

interprets a passage from the Bible and

quizzes the students on facts from last

week’s passage. Nance sticks out among

the half-dozen students, most of whom are

older than he and all of whom are black.

The night I sit in, the group is reading the

Pauline Epistles, and Lewis preaches on

how, despite people hoping to convince

Paul not to go to Jerusalem, where they

knew he would be persecuted, Paul is driv-

en by the word of God to go and spread

the Word. Paul preaches as he travels, both

to converts and gentiles, and Lewis encour-

ages the attendees to do the same: to feed

the faiths of the converted as well as those

who are not yet saved. In modern terms, he

says, we would call it follow-up work.

Nance says he has chosen Jesus and his

Apostles, some of the most influential,

successful leaders of all time, as his great-

est mentors and he’s taking notes on their

expansion techniques. Nance says his new-

found devotion changed how he saw his

successes. “I didn’t deserve the amazing

gift I received and it truly put things in per-

spective,” he later writes in an e-mail.

Lewis, the pastor, cautions Nance and

his other congregants about the evils of

worldly temptations. Still, Nance doesn’t

abstain completely: As SG president he’s

instituted pub crawls for students 21-and-

up, and while he’s cut back significantly on

his own drinking, he says, “I definitely find

myself doing those too frequently for my

pastor...if we had an honest conversation

on the subject I wouldn’t be proud.”

Now Nance is what he calls an “infant

Christian,” one who is slowly changing his

ways to become more like Jesus. He was

already working hard at school, in sports,

and for Moneythink, but he says God gave

him the strength to stay humble, make time

for his faith, sort out his priorities, and dial

back his partying. While his goals have

changed—Nance says he used to want to be

a hedge fund manager, and now he wants

to reduce inequality and help bring justice

to the world—his avenues of accomplish-

ment have stayed the same. Nance believes

that now his successes are for God’s glory,

rather than his own.

Chokshi says Nance doesn’t talk about

his faith much, but he’ll sometimes find

his friend speaking about Moneythink in

grand Biblical metaphors, as though he’s

picked up Lewis’ rhetorical techniques and

applied them to Moneythink. “You can’t be

uncomfortable talking about your plan or

your vision because that’s what leaders are

supposed to do,” Nance tells me, recalling

his interview for the Truman scholarship,

when he was grilled by a panel that asked

him what he wanted to do.

As undergraduate liaison, Nance took on

more responsibilities under the presidency

of Jarrod Wolf (A.B. ’10). He managed SG’s

Facebook and Twitter accounts and worked

on more initiatives. He took on projects

with second-year Frank Alarcon, and with

third-year David Chen and second-year

Patrick Ip, who later joined his execu-

tive slate. Although he hadn’t planned on

running for SG president, Nance recon-

sidered after working with Chen and Ip,

in whom he saw the potential for strong

leadership. His family and Moneythink

mentors encouraged him to run, pointing

out that while he had a leadership role at

Moneythink, he hadn’t yet learned to work

within a long-standing bureaucratic institu-

tion with a culture of its own.

Next year, Nance is headed to Cambridge,

where he’ll pursue a degree in manage-

ment. He also plans to continue running

Moneythink from abroad, join the boxing

team at Cambridge, which has a centuries-

long tradition of matches attended by

packed stadiums, and spend more time

exploring his spirituality. After that, he

plans to be a teacher for Teach for America

(he’s deferred his acceptance) as well as

run Moneythink. Beyond then, Nance isn’t

sure. Sometimes, he mentions becoming a

superintendent or exploring more entrepre-

neurial projects; other times, he’s excited

about joining the Marines, or even getting

into politics.

“I want to be a leader in some capacity,

I’m not sure if it will be in education, in

business, as an entrepreneur, or in govern-

ment,” Nance says. “As I’ve looked around,

the best practices in each are similar... I

want to do one of those things in my life,

I’m not sure which.”

Nance is a man who thinks in terms of

opportunity costs, and fraught with the

certainty that whatever he does, he’ll be

missing out on something else, he’s hedg-

ing his bets. No matter what, he figures, the

management degree will serve him well.

“People are always like ‘I don’t know what

I wanna do, I don’t know what I wanna

do,’ I don’t necessarily know either, but I

think you can know the next footsteps for

yourself.”

Go to ChicagoMaroon.com/grey-city for an online exclusive: Greg Nance, the paper doll.

Nance believes that now his

successes are for God's glory, rather

than his own

When they're totally exhausted, I go to work

like it's my day jobMATT BOGEN/GREY CITY