He trotted the globe his first year as a Tar Heel

Nathan Martin took the scenic route to Chapel Hill.

Campus is about 100 miles southeast of his native Danbury, North Carolina, and the first-year student eventually made this trip.

But first he traveled the world, working on a farm in Portugal, mentoring Boy Scouts in Australia, teaching English in Vietnam and visiting Ireland and Japan.

A 2025 high school graduate, Martin was selected for a Global Gap Year Fellowship after being accepted at Carolina. The fellowship, administered by the UNC Y, gives incoming Tar Heels $8,000 to complete a self-designed gap year.

The hope is that participants make memories lasting a lifetime while becoming more independent and mature. That was the case for Martin.

“I feel like I’m college-ready now,” said Martin, who plans on studying English and comparative literature in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences.

Martin grew up on a farm in Danbury, North Carolina, which helped with his transition to Pavia, Portugal, where he dug trenches. (Submitted photo)

Martin learned of the fellowship from his high school counselor and thought, “Well, no harm in trying.”

He had never been abroad and wanted to explore. While some 18-year-olds wouldn’t want to set off on a solo sojourn right after graduating high school, Martin said his experience as a Boy Scout made him “more comfortable doing new things.” It helped that the Global Gap Year program hosts an annual summer institute on campus for fellows, where they hear from former participants and receive advice and tips.

Martin left home last September, saying goodbye to his parents and younger brother in Stokes County.

After a week visiting Ireland — including a stop at the Cliffs of Moher — he got to work on a farm in Pavia, Portugal, a remote, small town in the country’s Alentejo region, about 90 miles east of Lisbon.

The job was straightforward but tiring. The region is extremely dry, and preventing rainwater runoff is crucial. Martin spent much of his time there digging trenches to hold water.

When he wasn’t working, Martin was writing.

“Poetry was a big part of my gap year,” Martin said. “Whenever I had time, I’d sit down and just get to work.”

View of Mount Tomaree in Australia, where Martin spent time working with Boy Scouts. (Submitted photo)

After spending the winter holidays at home, Martin headed to suburban Australia, living just outside of Maitland, a city near the country’s southeast coast. There he spent 1½ months working with boys participating in Scouts Australia, an opportunity that came about through a friend with family in Australia.

“You think you’re teaching them, but really it’s more that they’re teaching you,” he said.

The final leg of his service trilogy came in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he spent two months teaching English to children and adults in the nation’s capital through Vietnamese Community Volunteering. This was made more difficult by the fact that Martin doesn’t speak Vietnamese, but he worked well with his teaching aide, who knew the language and English.

“I went from very rural to suburban to very urban,” Martin said of his Portugal-to-Australia-to-Vietnam progression. He closed out his international travels with a trip to Osaka and Kyoto in Japan.

Now he’ll navigate campus life. The year abroad has made Martin more willing to embrace opportunities in Chapel Hill. “There’s so many things I would’ve missed out on” had he come here directly out of high school.

In addition to developing as a writer and exploring a second major to complement his English studies, Martin wants to try fencing and find people to play chess with.

If he sees you on campus, don’t be surprised if he strikes up a conversation.

“After a year abroad, I’m very desensitized to the, ‘Oh, I don’t want to bother people,’” Martin said. “I’m very much like, ‘Hi, how are you? What’s your name?’ I’m not intimidated by college as much anymore because I had to figure out countries where I couldn’t even begin to read the language.”