Luke McLendon
About Me
My name is Luke McLendon. I am currently 16 years old and enrolled in Auburn High School. The purpose of this website is to let others learn more about me sort of like you would in a blog. I have three dogs named Maggie, Lucy, and Milo along with a little brother named Sam. If you want to know anything else, I have specific labeled sections below!
School
Right now I’m a sophomore taking my math, science, history, and English classes along with a couple others. The extras I chose were art, Spanish, AP Computer Science Principles, and AP Psychology. By far, my favorite subject is history. This picture to the left is from my Spanish 2 class. I chose it because this was by far my most enjoyable class. I feel like it was mostly because of the teacher but (almost) everyone in there was fun to be around.
Work
Outside of school, I have plenty of other things going on as well. I’ve been volunteering at the Public Library for well over a year now and I’m considering trying to find a job there. While I was in 9th grade I did work there through a teen volunteering program and just had to pull books or make sure none were out of order. Now, they usually don’t let you stay on longer than that since it’s a very popular place for students heading off to college to get a lot of service hours and they can only have so many people at a time. Fortunately, near the end of my time there, some construction was going on and I volunteered to stay on a team that would paint a mural on a wall that was scheduled to be torn down. The first mural is done and now we’re almost finished with a second one over in the kids section. It’s taking a little longer since we went from nine people down to just three, but we’re making progress. By the time it’s finished, I should be about done with school and I’ll be able to apply for a job there during the Summer. I’ve heard a lot of other people try the same thing, but I’m staying optimistic!
Interests
What kind of blog would this even be if I didn’t put my interests on it? Now, I could just put them down in a list and be done with it, but that sounds boring to write and to read so I’ll give a little bit of history behind each one. This leads perfectly into the first one which is, ironically, history. History is easily one of my favorite subjects in school and favorite category to go after when I play trivia. I’d say it probably started standing out to me when I found this YouTube channel called Oversimplified that made animated videos about historical events. They were funny and engaging enough to be a sort of gateway into how I feel about it today.
Another interest of mine is reading, which shouldn’t come as a surprise since I have a whole page of the website dedicated to books I liked. I’ll admit, I haven’t read a book in a month or so but I blame that on TikTok frying my brain before I deleted it. I started noticing that it was getting harder to stay focused and engaged on something for long periods of time, so TikTok had to go. I was fine for a while until I found some other social media app that’s doing the exact same thing. I haven’t brought myself to get rid of it quite yet so we’ll see how it goes.
Something else I enjoy doing is programming, which is probably obvious since I’m taking an AP class in it. I’d say this interest just built gradually over time as I (very) slowly worked with the concept enough to understand and even enjoy it. Not to mention the high salaries that some people in that field earn. Bad news, there is an expected decline in the demand for people in that field because of AI. Good news, cybersecurity still seems like a valid path and it pays about the same. I even went to a cybersecurity camp over the Summer where I don’t think I learned anything important but I got the chance to talk with people just as interested in this as I was. One guy there even had all the certifications he needed to land himself a decent job right out of high school.
These next two interests are sort of similar so I’m lumping them together here. I really enjoy art and creative writing. These are both fairly new for me and I’d say I didn’t really get into them until last year. My freshman English class had a lot of assignments where we had freedom to write what we wanted as long as it met a couple requirements, and I found it pretty relaxing. We even had a projects for poetry and a short story.
When it comes to art, I had an old sketchbook and tried to watercolor a while back but now that I’m taking it as a class I’d say I’ve gotten more serious about it. Admittedly, I can barely draw a straight line and usually make up what I’m doing as a go. But no one was born just knowing how to draw. With enough practice I’m sure I’ll see improvement over time.
The Future?
I’m still very much working this part out. I’ve only just figured out what colleges I might want to go to. MIT would be the dream choice, Georgia Tech is realistic, and Auburn is the fallback. As I stated before, I think that I’ll go for a career in cybersecurity, but that could change later. I plan on going into the International Baccalaureate program at school which is just like taking harder AP classes but it looks better on college applications and (supposedly) makes you a more well-rounded person. Again, who knows? If I can’t get that job at the library that I mentioned earlier then I’ll probably settle for Publix as a good Summer job. Aside from all of that, the future is pretty uncertain. I still have a lot to work on and figure out before I can say with absolute certainty which direction I’ll be going.
