Some state medals at the Science Olympiad four years in a row. His academic team went to Nationals one year. Outsie of school he did some work modeling for a couple of med school professors, he was acknowledged in a paper for one of them. He worked summers and part time for a firm that works with publishing companies on database management. Oh and he got an award from some Gaming Magazine for the best mod of the year for work he did on Civ 4. He volunteered one summer at the local senior center in the computer lab. And he took a computer programming course one summer at Columbia doing gaming graphics. It’s not a question really of emulating. Opportunities came up and he didn’t flub them. But he was lucky to know people who had projects for him to do.