Sophomore Dawson Rooney never thought he’d find himself participating with the grade above him instead of his own. Currently Rooney is in multiple upperclassmen classes. Being young for his grade, he never saw himself connecting to those older than him either. Yet when he moved to Hays from Kansas City, the district saw his potential and moved him up.

1. What’s your favorite place you’ve lived? 

“My favorite place I’ve lived is in Hays, because I feel like I’ve made a lot close friends, and a lot better and more reliable friends than I could have made anywhere else.”

2. If you could live anywhere, where would you live?

“There are a lot of places I’d like to live. I always answer this question with ‘on Mars’, but if it is on Earth then I’d probably say the Isle of Man. I’d choose this place because it’s always beautiful and it is an amazing place to go. Also some distant relatives of mine live there and they are all really nice people.”

3. What career are you heading into?

“I don’t know what career I’m headed into, though it is probably a sort of engineering or science. If I had to choose a field right now, it would be Nanorobotics, however it is not that big of a field right now. I think it is amazing that it is possible to make robots that are so small and that they can do so much.”

4. Is it harder to be in classes with upperclassmen all the time?

“No, I personally cannot relate with much of my own class. I feel like I can more relate to the upperclassmen. I feel more comfortable around upperclassmen than I do my own classmates because I have spent much more time getting to know them than the people in my class.”

5. If you could trade places with anyone for a day, who would you trade places with?

“I don’t really know how to answer this question. I really like living my own life, not someone else’s.”

6. If you could time travel back or forward to any age, what age would you pick and why?

“I’d travel back in time to the dark ages and teach them all about the science we have today, then when I returned to the present we’d have 1000 years more advanced technology (and maybe a few time paradoxes, this question does remove all of the time travel weirdness right? RIGHT!!??)”

7. What would be your dream college?

“My dream college is probably Vanderbilt because they are one of very few schools that has nanotechnology, nanorobotics, and nanoscience.”

8. What are you going to do to help the world someday?

“Make medical nano-robots that can travel through the bloodstream and kill harmful viruses and diseases. They would also be able to repair damaged organs.”

9. What’s one thing you want people to know about you?

“Nothing, I’m a mystery. Not really, but I’m usually fairly energetic.”

10. Do you feel like you’re special since you’re in higher classes or just like a regular person with luck?

“I don’t really think I’m special, but I also know that I am not lucky. In all honesty, I am only hard working and I push myself to try and be the best that I can be.”

11. How does your family life help you with academics?

“My family life helps with my academics because both my brother and sister were in advanced classes, and my parents want me to do the same. So they push me and help me to understand everything in my classes so that I can do well in them.”

12. What’s your favorite random fact?

“The pound key, or ‘hashtag’ is actually called an Octothorpe.”

13. What do you really wish to achieve in life, what’s your ultimate goal?

“I don’t know. And people may say yes you do, but they shouldn’t because I really don’t yet. Emphasis on yet.”

17mcrees@usd489.com