Welcome to My Life

Nolan Callahan is tall, Caucasian, and very plain looking. His simplified aesthetic, often composed of black Levi's jeans and Fruit of the Loom tee shirts often masks the passionate individual it clothes. Nolan grew up the 2nd of four brothers in Lighthouse Point, Florida, a tiny suburb of Ft. Lauderdale with hardly anything going on. The sons of two Northeastern transplants, with father Kevin hailing from Connecticut and mother Lisa from Rhode Island, the Callahan boys kept themselves busy for much of their childhood playing ice hockey and getting yelled at for practicing too much in the house. Upon reaching eighth grade at his Catholic school, St. Joan of Arc, in Boca Raton, Nolan found himself faced with what would be one of the most formative decisions of his life. While playing a hockey tournament in Chicago in the fall, his team was approached by two coaches from a tiny school in the woods of New Hampshire, Cardigan Mountain School. Having grown up spending time visiting his grandfather's farm in New Hampshire at least once a year, Nolan became intrigued with the opportunity to pursue his dream of playing hockey at a higher level within the New England prep school system. Upon further research on Google, Nolan became captivated with Cardigan and decided to run the idea of checking it out by his parents. While hesitant, they had never been pleased with the school system in Florida and the prospect of a boarding school with two hundred boys and an average class size around 8 seemed enticing. After one visit on Cardigan's campus both he and his father were completely sold. Surrounded by mountains, and seated on a lake, the natural beauty of this new place were in such stark contrast to what he had experienced in South Florida his entire life. By the next fall, he was enrolled and found himself embarking on a scholastic journey that would take him to four schools in four different states over ten years. 1500 miles from home without a cellphone or access to Facebook or YouTube, Nolan took full advantage of his new surroundings. Sharing a dorm house with students from Finland, Mexico, Korea, Texas, and oddly enough another student from South Florida, Nolan realized quickly that he was experiencing something far different than his fellow classmates that remained in Florida for high school. He was exploding with excitement for the winter to roll around so that he could prove himself on the ice and show everyone at this new school just how serious he was about hockey. When tryouts came around, the reality was far different from what Nolan had imagined, and he quickly realized he was not at the same level as the other athletes and found himself on the JV team. This was soul crushing, and Nolan spent weeks pleading for his father to let him come home to Florida. His entire identity had been wrapped up since the age of four in his ability to play hockey, and his dream had fallen apart before his very eyes. Smartly, his father made him tough out the New Hampshire winter and remain at Cardigan reminding him of the incredible opportunities that he had by being there, and reluctantly Nolan obliged his father. Later that year Nolan decided to give lacrosse a try, a sport that was familiar to the boarding school world but had evaded him for much of his life in Florida. He was hooked. Within months of making and playing every game for the varsity lacrosse team, Nolan's dorm parents were informing his father that Nolan would one day play college lacrosse. His father was mostly shocked at this news, but seemed to trust their confidence and did all he could to nurture Nolan's newfound love for lacrosse. Upon returning to Cardigan for his ninth grade year (Cardigan is grades 6-9) Nolan was met with interest from secondary school lacrosse coaches across New England who wished for him to join their school's communities and play on their lacrosse teams. Many of these schools were national powerhouses in the sport and the attention that Nolan received mostly surprised him due to his short time playing, but he took it all in stride and after a long process of school visits, interviews, and applications much like looking for colleges he found himself enrolled in Avon Old Farms, another all boys school situated in Avon, Connecticut with a nationally ranked lacrosse program. Nolan entered Avon no longer defining himself as a hockey player, or really any type of athlete but rather just another student, but was met with enthusiasm from other students that had heard of his lacrosse prowess prior to him reaching Avon. The pressure to perform was evident from his first day stepping on campus and Nolan was very ready for the challenge spending much of his free time getting in extra practice for the lacrosse season that awaited him in the spring. Upon reaching that spring, and after tryouts, Nolan had made the varsity roster although he found himself as the fourth goalie out of four on the depth chart. Understanding this was much to do with his age at the time, Nolan continued to work tirelessly to be ready when his name was called to play. Later that spring, that moment happened as the All American, Johns Hopkins bound goaltender Will Ryan went down with a broken ankle from an unfortunate stickball accident. Now was Nolan's time, and he rose to the occasion leading Avon to wins over nationally ranked programs, and earning himself All Western New England honors as just a  sophomore. Next came the grueling summer lacrosse circuit in which recruits travel around the country to play in front of college coaches looking to find their next players. Nolan rose to the occasion that summer as well and rather than finding himself boating around South Florida he found himself visiting colleges across the country ultimately finding himself at Syracuse University. Syracuse is the most storied program in college lacrosse, and Nolan was in awe from the first moment he stepped on campus. While his entire lacrosse career had been a whirlwind to this point, and not much thought had gone into what he wanted to do with his life outside of play lacrosse, he found himself committed to Syracuse before returning to Avon for his junior year. With college decided already his junior and senior year at Avon were largely uneventful, as Nolan prepared to be at Syracuse. He graduated with honor roll grades and was off to make everyone proud on the national stage as a member of the Syracuse Orange lacrosse team. If only it was that easy. Once he arrived on campus, Nolan was met with something that he had really not experienced in high school, partying. There was also an aspect of Syracuse he had not been familiar with since middle school, girls. This led Nolan to become less and less interested in the prospect of being a professional lacrosse player and more interested in having an awesome time. This was a recipe for disaster as his grades began to stagnate, and in the fall of his sophomore year he found himself deciding to leave the lacrosse team to take time to figure out what it was he really wanted to do with his life. After intense existential dread and a period of academic probation, Nolan found himself in a creative writing class studying food politics. The research topic he chose was organic farming, and Nolan quickly found himself down a rabbithole of the state of American farming and problems surrounding the food system. Nolan recognized immediately that this was what he wanted to do and after conversations with his father decided he would transfer out of Syracuse to chase this newfound passion. Nolan found himself enrolled in the Agriculture and Food Systems program at Rutgers University, and hit the ground running participating in an entrepreneurial agriculture internship in his first year in which he managed 2 and a half acres of diversified crops that he even took to local farmers markets. Nolan had found his love, and his purpose and had a newfound love for his life that fuels him to this day. Nolan is currently a full time glassblower and is in his final year at Rutgers. He hopes upon graduation to save up enough money to purchase land and begin his own diversified organic farm and agricultural consulting firm in New Jersey to educate farmers and the public alike on the importance of sound agricultural practices that mitigate negative externalities affecting our health, environment, and future.