At a time most young children find fun in making a mess, one Whiteland Community High School senior took the opposite approach.
Trevor Speer’s parents were surprised at just how organized their son was.
“When he was small, it was so unusual. When he had a reading assignment, he would map out how many pages he had to do in a day,” Denise Speer said. “Trevor has done all of this by himself. We haven’t really pushed him to be the self-perfectionist that he is.”
“My husband is an engineer and I’m an accounting major, so that’s pretty nerdy. But Trevor has taken it to another level.”
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His organizational skills have helped Trevor Speer, 18, achieve his goal of being valedictorian in Whiteland’s senior class of 454 students. Knowing every detail of the assignments and possessing the work ethic to finish them helped Speer earn a 4.58 grade-point average.
“I’ve always tried to be as neat and organized as possible,” Trevor Speer said. “I don’t know where that came from.”
He will attend Purdue University and major in computer engineering. Computer engineering combines Speer’s two great passions – electrical engineering and computer science. He’s been passionate about electronics for as long as he can remember, he said.
“Since I thought about it as a really young child, I’ve wanted to be an engineer,” Trevor Speer said. “Since sixth or seventh grade, I’ve been extremely fascinated with computers and programming.”
His father, Bruce Speer, has been a mechanical engineer at NTN Driveshaft, Inc., in Columbus, the past 30 years, but Trevor’s career interests vary somewhat from his dad’s.
In his commencement speech, Trevor Speer plans to take some time to thank the people who have helped him reach his goal.
“It definitely started with my parents. They’ve both pushed me to be my best. Eventually, it became something intrinsic in me that pushed me to keep doing better,” Trevor Speer said. “My friends have also been a major influence. They’ve been there to compete with me.”
Being first in his class is an accomplishment Speer takes great pride in, he said.
“It’s definitely an honor, but there is a stigma to it, I think. People kind of look at you as kind of snobbish sometimes,” he said. “It is stressful, but I do think I’ll look back at it as something that was cool.”
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Name: Trevor Speer
Age: 18
Parents: Bruce and Denise Speer
Residence: Whiteland
GPA: 4.58
College: Purdue University
Major: Computer Engineering
Career goals: “I would like more than anything to work with computers. I really like programming, so doing something like that would be interesting for me.”
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