| September
26, 2005 Vol. 77, no. 5F
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| OH,
SO READY FOR COLLEGE: Despite being just
16, EECS junior transfer Scott Goodson is already at home in his
Berkeley dorm room. Goodson skipped five years of K-12 education.
(Photo Credit: Rachel Jackson)
|
Age doesn’t
matter, only a love for computers
EECS junior transfer finds his place at Berkeley
EECS junior transfer Scott Goodson has a cold, but that doesn’t
prevent him from messing around on his 1.1-terabyte laptop in his Unit
1 dorm room. “I’m really into video,” he says. “I
like making them, especially time-lapse ones, because you can easily
see and analyze patterns.” He plays a sped-up clip of driving
along streets and freeways in southern California shot from the roof
of his car. The video is set to electronica music. For Goodson, driving
is a relatively new thing. He’s 16.
“It’s not really that difficult,” he says when asked
about being so young at Berkeley. “People can’t really tell
I’m 16. The only ones who know are people I’ve told.”
It’s true that Goodson doesn’t act like a typical teenager.
Then again, he didn’t spend much time in high school. “I
was there one year as a freshman and then I petitioned to go to junior
college and get my AA degree,” he explains. He also skipped half
of sixth grade, all of seventh, and the first half of eighth grade.
All told, he bypassed five years of K-12.
Junior transfers this age are uncommon in the College. Student Academic
Affairs Assistant Dean Robert Giomi says the typical age range is between
19 and 25.
With the smarts and the drive, Goodson could have gone to any top school.
Yet he chose Berkeley, he says, because it passed his cost-benefit analysis.
“Berkeley came out on top because of its large, diverse campus,
and access to resources at a good price,” he says. “I didn’t
even apply to Stanford.”
Like most EECS students, Goodson loves computers. “It’s
the synergy of all these independent systems working together,”
he explains. He’s an Apple devotee and disparages Windows. One
of his classes is Macintosh Software Development for OS X.
Goodson might just have an engineering gene. His dad earned a master’s
degree in chemical engineering from Caltech, and later an MBA. At home
growing up, Goodson says he spent most of his time in his room on his
computer. He was three when he first sat at a computer (on his dad’s
lap) and 10 when he got his first Apple. For the last few years, he
ran an Apple repair business out of his house, though he quit when he
came to Berkeley.
So what’s his impression so far? “It’s exceeded my
expectations,” he says. “The whole environment is bustling
with research and learning. I was walking through Hearst Mining and
I saw the radioactive and high-magnetic warning signs posted on laboratory
doors; it was wild. It’s so interesting here.”
And, for the first time, class is tough. “The difficulty is right
there, but I’m engaged in the lectures and find them very productive
in terms of my time. I will be working hard this semester,” he
says.
Visit Goodson’s website at http://scottgoodson.com/.
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