For many students at the David Eccles School of Business, their time as undergraduates can best be encapsulated by the mantra, “Try everything.”

After all, participating in centers and institutes, cohort programs, clubs and organizations, and various other extracurriculars is a great way to gain hands-on experience and fill out a résumé.

Nate Sorensen, on the other hand, has had enough unique exploits that he figured his time at the Eccles School was an opportunity to slow down and focus on learning.

“I was a little bit of a boring college student,” Nate said with a laugh. “… By the time I started school, I was almost 22. I had been out of the country, I’d been deployed, I had learned two different languages. I didn’t need [a resident advisor] on campus telling me that it was time for me to go to bed and brush my teeth.”

He noted that upon graduating from Mountain View High School in Orem, Utah, he did so with “grades [that] were good enough to get accepted [to college], not good enough to get it paid for,” so he looked for alternatives. He joined the Utah Army National Guard and learned to be an Arabic translator. He wanted a challenge he wasn’t completely sure ahead of time that he could pull off. He also wanted to travel the world, and he wanted his college tuition covered after his service was complete.

Nate wound up learning both Arabic and Spanish, traveling to Morocco four times with the Army, and working as a translator for Special Forces and infantry units, as well as a humanitarian healthcare mission. Then it was time to return to the classroom.

The University of Utah ticked several boxes for him: He needed to pick a state-run, public school to get the Army to pay for his education; Salt Lake offered him just enough “city life” to be an upgrade on Utah County; plus, it was close to home, but just far enough away to give him a sense of freedom.

When it came time to pick an area of study, he faced a conundrum — he had a love of the artistic but an aptitude for the technical. Plus, the Army would provide additional funding if he went into a STEM-related field.

“If the world was different, I would have double-majored in medieval literature and art history — but I also really like being employed,” Nate said. “So I went with the thing that I was good at, not the thing that I was passionate about.”

He considered engineering but ultimately opted for the Eccles School’s Information Systems program. It was partly a “laziness decision” — he didn’t want to do the math required to be a software engineer or a physical engineer; I.S., meanwhile, is still in the STEM world, but has a business requirement instead.

There were yet more reasons, driven by pragmatism and self-awareness. I.S. was something of an academic sweet spot, appealing to both his analytical and artistic sides: he’d have the ability to find creative solutions for complicated problems.

“And,” he added with a smile, “I like to talk way too much to be just coding all day.”

Somewhat counterintuitively, time spent managing a tattoo studio sealed the deal.

“I didn’t really love the tattooing aspect of it, but I did quite like the marketing and the business, the finance side, the decisions that the company was making as a brand and as a financial entity,” Nate said.

He praised assistant professor Matt Pecsok’s courses for necessitating both critical thinking and the ability to deconstruct large problems into component parts. He thanked professor Rohit Aggarwal for being “an incredible mentor” as he prepared to transition from academics to the real world. And he said the Information Systems program in general gave him hands-on experience with ambiguous, real-world situations, particularly through exercises such as the Game Day Analytics Challenge.

After spending nine or 10 months as an intern for SwitchBase (an Orem-based tech startup specializing in venue operations), Nate got hired on following his recent graduation. Though it is challenging work with fast-moving and unique problems, he feels well-equipped for the job because of the well-rounded foundation the Eccles School provided. As a result, he is enjoying being part of a small-but-growing team as opposed to working at a corporate leviathan.

“I really like that I landed at a startup instead of at [a place] where maybe I would have had one real contribution a year at a big company,” he said. “Here, every two hours I get to make a decision that’s going to steer the ship.”

Nate knows that the path he’s taken is one unlikely to be replicated by many. Still, he has some practical advice for current and future Eccles students.

“Getting into the world and having a base of skills is the best thing,” he said. “Your grades don’t matter as much as you think that they do; learn to learn — don’t learn to get a good grade.”