Many Fordham students take advantage of their proximity to New York City when it comes to culture, entertainment and internship opportunities. Nicole Pieri, FCRH ’16, truly embodies the Fordham motto, “New York is my campus. Fordham is my school.”
Nicole decided to pursue a communication and media studies major after writing for her high school’s newspaper in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. In addition to being a staff writer at The Fordham Ram, Nicole is an outreach ambassador for Rose Hill Society.
Nicole’s experiences at Fordham have reaffirmed but also slightly altered her career ambitions.
“Originally I wanted to be a journalist going into Fordham,” said Nicole. “Then, second semester of freshman year I read Live From New York, the SNL tell-all book. I got super obsessed with it — the TV business and especially NBC. I started gravitating towards that and realized that was what I wanted to do.”
Last fall Nicole interned at Viacom for the MTV 360 department. She enjoyed working in entertainment and decided that she wanted to become a producer.
“I really have to be proactive and adaptable to anything because every day in production is different,” said Nicole. “You have to be able to think on your feet and do whatever it takes to get the end product.”
This past summer, Nicole divided her time between New York, Philadelphia and London. While in London, she took Fordham’s Writing for Magazines course.One of her favorite experiences included a bus tour to Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and Bath, England.
With her class, she was able to see the play McQueen at the St. James Theatre, based on the life of famed deceased British designer Alexander McQueen. She was tasked with writing a review for The Observer, and was able to interview two of the play’s stars: Steven Wright and Diana Agron.
“It was challenging but a lot of fun,” said Nicole. “The recording wasn’t the best and it was a half hour of conversation, so transcribing and finding the right narrative form was really tough. The whole class was asking questions but it was me writing it down, so bringing everyone’s ideas into one article was tough.”
It is easy for upperclassmen to get caught up with classes and internship, and not take the time to explore New York City. Aside from her internship experiences and professional ambitions, Nicole’s selfie and playbill collections are enviable.
Nicole’s recent favorite Broadway play is “Fun Home.” Her all-time favorite, however is “Next to Normal”. She saw it her freshman year of high school and said it was “unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.”
Nicole has braved the elements to sleep over in line for tickets to “Saturday Night Live.” She has been to two live shows and one dress rehearsal: Melissa McCarthy and Phoenix, Paul Rudd and One Direction and Andrew Garfield and Coldplay.
When asked if she still had anything left on her college bucket list, Nicole said, “I was thinking about this — there’s so many things I want to do. I want to do one more ‘Saturday Night Live’ before I graduate because that’s something you can’t really do as an adult. You have to be able to sleep outside for multiple hours and deal with the weather and not really care.”
Nicole was able to meet a number of Hollywood and Broadway stars by the stage doors after performances, including Emma Stone in “Cabaret,” Darren Criss in “Headwig and the Angry Inch” and Christian Borle and Brian d’Arcy James from “Something Rotten.”
She also posted a selfie with Jimmy Fallon, with coordinating facial expressions. “We had just gone to ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers’ and we were like, ‘Let’s wait for Jimmy. Why not?’ He was super nice and took a picture with us.”
As Nicole looks ahead to graduation, her time at Fordham has defined both her desire to live in New York City and work toward becoming a producer.
