Some students find out they've been named an Illinois State Scholar and can't quite believe it. Michael Gooding is not that student.

When he got the pass from Mr. Matthews to come down to the office, he figured it was just something routine. When he found out he'd been named among the top ten percent of students in the state of Illinois, his reaction was about as “Michael Gooding” as it gets.

"It felt pretty good," he says.

No disbelief. No drama. He knew the work he had put in. The confirmation was welcome, but it wasn't a surprise.

Michael is from Roseville — population about a thousand. It’s tight-knit in the way small towns tend to be, and he's spent his high school years at Monmouth-Roseville building a schedule that looks more like a blueprint than a course list. Calculus. Statistics. Advanced chemistry. Physics. Biology never really interested him, so he didn't pursue it. But anything with structure, logic, and the satisfying puzzle of how systems work… That's where his interest has been all along.

"I just try to be in as many of those as possible," he says.

Next fall, he'll take that orientation to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he'll pursue computer engineering. The decision came down to a campus visit where the engineering facilities, a good tour guide, and a feeling that settled the question.

"Sounds like a place I want to go to college," he says simply.

One thing that sealed the decision happened during his college visit. He noticed that Intel had installed a lab on campus, a mirror of one of their own facilities. Why? Specifically because they hire so many engineers out of UIUC. "I thought that was pretty cool," he says. For a student already thinking about where his degree might take him, that kind of signal matters.

What draws him to computer engineering specifically is the hardware side: the processors, the architecture, the physical infrastructure underneath everything else. When the conversation turned to AI and the way it's reshaping the workforce, he was clear-eyed about where he fits in.

"It's building the actual hardware for the AI," he says. "Job protection, you know?"

He says it with quiet confidence, not arrogance. He's thought this through.

His broader ambitions follow the same logic. "I'd like to invent something," he says, "or work on a project that helps society grow as a whole. Through technology and stuff."

However,  when asked what society actually needs most right now, his answer isn't technical at all.

"People just need to come together," he says. "Too many different institutions, too many people on different sides. I think the world would be a lot better if we were just one species."

It's a striking thing to hear from someone headed into computer engineering, but it fits. He goes further, too, building the thought out with real clarity. "Everybody in society has their own place, and when you put it together, you have something good. Like the sum of the parts is less than the whole."

He means the whole is greater, of course, but the idea lands either way.

Two people in particular put him on this path. His aunt, a science teacher in Galesburg, got him hooked early. He'd help her clean up her classroom in the summers, and she helped him get his feet wet with the way science actually worked. The other person was his dad, who owned his own auto shop. He gave him something just as valuable: hands-on time with engines, tools, and the particular satisfaction of understanding how something works and making it better.

"I got my hands on cars," Michael says, "and I like to work with my hands."

He also has a sister who is twenty years older, which means he's grown up in a household where he functioned more like an only child. He says his sister acts "almost like a grandma" to him. He can go over and do whatever he wants. She's also one of the closest people to him.

Then there's football. He played lineman for four years — not because he's a sports fanatic, but because he liked the team.

"I'm not a big sports guy," he says, "but I enjoy it. I like the team."

What he'll take with him from those years is less about the games themselves and more about the larger lessons. "The discipline it takes — in the weight room, on the field — the bonds you make with your teammates. I feel like that's transferable to all the other aspects of life."

After college, he'd like to travel a bit and see where his skills take him, but there's a pull toward home that's pretty clear.

"I kind of want to settle down close to here," he says. "I've got family around."

Technology, he believes, isn't going anywhere. The question is what you do with it. For Michael Gooding — patient, methodical, already thinking several layers down — that question feels less like a problem to solve and more like an invitation.