Whiz Kid: Mehlville Student Volunteers in Joplin

Meet this week's Patch Whiz Kid, Nathan Quinn, who manages a busy schedule between, school, sports, family, church and teaching music lessons.

Name: Nathan Quinn

Age: 17 

School:

Year in school: Senior

Accomplishment: The National Merit Scholarship Corporation recently recognized Nathan as a semifinalist.

Key to Awesomeness: Nathan Quinn is an outstanding student with SAT test scores that rank in the top one percent in the nation and a top GPA at Mehlville High School. However, these numbers do not reveal all of his dimensions. Nathan has a variety of skills, talents and interests that transcend his scores and grade point average.

Nathan is an accomplished pianist and singer. He sings in the Mehlville High School choir and solo ensemble and he teaches lessons in both voice and piano. At , he is a prominent figure in the praise band.

A church mission trip took Nathan to Joplin over Memorial Day weekend to help provide relief to the tornado victims.

“We worked through a local church distributing supplies, cleaning up debris and getting items out of houses. Nothing was standing in any direction, not even trees,” Nathan said.

On a recent family vacation, he traveled to China.

“My sister is adopted from China, so this was a heritage tour of sorts, and had been in the works for a while. Mom saved for a long time otherwise we couldn’t have gone. We had a great trip. We traveled all over starting in Shanghai, cruising the Yangtze, passing through Chongqing, Guilin and Xi’an, and ending in Beijing,” he said. “We hit as many tourist sites as we could, and I befriended a couple of Chinese teens while on the cruise.”

An avid reader, Nathan prefers fiction and recommends a work by Sharon Kay Penman, The Sunne in Splendour.

“It is a fun piece of historical fiction that gives a sympathetic view of Richard III,” he said.

Nathan is on both the Mehlville High School track and cross country teams.

“Cross country is going extremely well this year. We moved up from being ranked in the 70s last year to being 13th in the state out of 4A schools and 14th overall. We have an outside chance of getting out of sectionals,” he said. 

As for university plans, Nathan is applying to both Yale and Harvard. His sights are set on a combined major at Yale, ethics, politics and economics.

When Nathan is just relaxing, he enjoys reading or a pick-up game of ultimate frisbee. “I’m not on a league. It’s just for fun,” he said.