Getting involved was key for senior Brandon Noble. Right off the bat freshman year, he set off to see what high school had to offer for the underclassman. Since Noble jokes about how he “wasn’t exactly built for sports, or sports weren’t built for him.” He went on to follow his brothers footsteps and signed up for Math Team and Academic Team.

“Math Team; he was in it, I liked it,” Noble said. “I said to myself, ‘I like math, I’m going to like Math team since it’s in the name!’ So I then tried that out, and then I tried Model UN and did a number of functions here.”

From there, he took advantage of other clubs or activities and tried those out, and, as the years went by, Noble was involved with a number of activities, from academic to board game clubs.

“A friend of mine got a board game club started, and we did that for a couple two or three years,” Noble said. “That was fun. It really came into its own.”

But Noble didn’t stop at just school activities. For a number of years, he has been a part of Boy Scouts; this was something he participated in every week. He did Boy Scouts to spend time with friends, but as time went on, a lot of them dropped out. Noble continued. This didn’t stop him because “it’s also for yourself. That you’re doing it for both; your friends and yourself.”

Teachers to Thank

Starting at Antioch Upper Grade School, Noble has had a multitude of teachers leave great impressions on him throughout the years. To name a few, he mentions Kreuger from sixth grade and Tylka from seventh grade.

“It really blew up from there,” Noble said. “A lot of my teachers, I don’t antagonize them, I don’t know why I would, so it’s that sense that you can pick out the best out of everybody you meet and you try to be that, even if you can’t succeed in that it’s a good goal to have.”

“Noble” Accomplishments

Being as intelligent and involved as this senior is, it is no surprise that he has a wide variety of successful accomplishments. But there is one that he claims to have impacted him the most; one that was a struggle but also made him stronger.

ACHS’s Rube Goldberg team was looking for a leader. Noble, despite this being a new opportunity he had yet to experience, took a determined step forward to take the position.    

“I said to myself,  ‘Oh, I did Boy Scouts and stuff, how hard can it be?’ And it was hard,” he said. “And it was as hard as it can be. So theoretically, it was a lot and it was an eye-opening experience for me. Out of everything I have done in high school, a lot of it is just partaking, participating and what the program has.”

Just as any great leader, Noble admits there were some difficulties taking the leading role, but he never let these obstacles stop him.

“This one was a lot of taking charge and stuff,” Noble said. “I mean, there were mistakes made on my part, mainly because I was new to it, but it was still an experience that I would never give up.”

The team even granted him with an respectable nickname: “…they called me ‘fearless leader’ and that was a really cool nickname.”

From Antioch to Champaign

“I’ve already forgot all four years [of high school],” Noble said with a laugh. “Well, less than half.”

Since Noble is a wiz when it comes to math and sciences, he claims that he is not so strong on the opposite end of the spectrum: English. With that thought in mind, coming into ACHS and taking English wasn’t so much of a thrill for Noble.

“For me I never really considered myself that big in English,” he said. “All the years before high school, English was not my strongest. I didn’t read much. I didn’t write much. I hardly had a Facebook. I mean, I probably would’ve had a MySpace if I thought to be that dumb as a young kid.”

But as the years passed, and the more Noble was exposed to writing assignments and reading books, he realized how beneficial and how much stronger and well-rounded the classes made him, thanks to entire class discussions and critical essays.

“Now that I am thinking about it, in retrospect, English had become almost on-par with math and sciences as some of my favorite subjects during the school day,” Noble said. “So I guess it really just has to be a lot of the books we read in high school, and a lot of the writing assignments, as mundane as some of them could have been, it really helped me recognize that sort of thing.”

As far as after ACHS, Noble has committed to University of Illinois and is taking his talent, witty humor and impressive knowledge with him for engineering.

“Well, I hoped to go into college,” Noble said,  “and it looks like that hopes been recognized.”

After high school, Noble explains that there is one dream he wishes to fulfill in college.

“I am just hoping that, I guess out of all the dreams that I have for post-high school, is one more hour of sleep,” Noble said. “I got my fingers crossed for college with that one; I know it might not be consistent because of midterms and whatever but that’s one of my dreams.”