“Stupid” and “Lazy”? We Think Not.

Two summers ago, Sameer Narang ’05 was struggling to do his daily run.

He had to sidestep land mines, hold his sweaty passport and, on some days, wear a bulletproof vest. He was sprinting on the paths of Kosovo, where military checkpoints and minefields divided Serbs from Albanians. And Narang—who worked with children from both sides—wanted to be ready for cross-country meets come fall.

It’s just one way that Narang balances his life. The Phi Beta Kappa senior runs cross country and track, does research for a blind graduate student, is writing a thesis linking international relations to applied math and is fielding multiple job offers in finance and consulting in New York City.

“It’s always been a mystery to a lot of us how he manages to run and do well in all this stuff,” says Russell P. Leino ’05, Narang’s teammate of four years. “For a lot of us, it’s a trade-off.”

Not so for Narang, who sat in deserted Winthrop Dining Hall on a Friday morning. He had spent the previous night at the Quad Formal. “I’m a little bit hungover right now,” says Narang, who recently turned 21. For his birthday, he got last season’s DVD of “The O.C.” and has since been indulging in viewing binges. He also unwinds by playing darts and whiffleball in his suite. And he still manages to sleep eight to ten hours nightly.

“I’m really lazy,” he says with a mix of honesty and humility. Even at the prestigious first-round selection Phi Beta Kappa dinner honoring 25 juniors, he was humble. “I was just blown away by how I was by far the stupidest person in the room,” he says.

That’s part of what makes Narang so appealing, says Leino. “Sameer is like a born politician. He knows how to relate to virtually anybody. For a lot of people who are more shy, he kind of brings them into the fold.”

He does the same abroad. It all started the summer after freshman year, when he taught English to children in a northeast province of China. The next summer, he worked for Sport Without Borders, a Paris-based organization. Narang worked with Serbian and Albanian children separated by a river and warring cultures, bridging their differences through sport.

On his daily runs, he would pass by a small village and find a group of children playing soccer. “Sometimes, they’d all run away from me, this half-naked guy,” he says. Sometimes, they’d kick him the ball.