3650 days, 10 years—Most would have quit or have been burnt out by now, but not junior Michael Haley. In the face of doubt, thousands of sleepless nights, and stress, he rises again and again to face the challenge. This is because Haley has one motivation: becoming valedictorian.

Haley began his race to the top, due to one reason: to prove them wrong. At the young age of seven in second grade, he was moved out of an accelerated class.

“In the first three years of elementary school, I was just doing what everyone else was doing,” Haley said. “I was doing alright, and then in second grade, they introduced the advanced classes, and so my class became that. But, they moved me out of that class and put me into a different class because they didn’t think that I was good enough to be in the advanced class. That’s where [my drive]  kind of started.”

Walking down this newfound path, Haley decided to change his focus. Instead of proving them wrong, he would instead begin making a positive impact on humanity.

“I want to be able to have done research that somehow impacts humanity,” Haley said. “To contribute something. I want to make an impact on the world, and [to be] remembered for a while. I think that’s the main thing that I kind of want to see myself having done by the time I’m 80.”

But Haley soon learned that simply dreaming about a dream is vain, and decided to manifest his potential by doing what he could, climbing closer to his goals.

“I learned that I like to prioritize what’s important to me and when you’re gonna have the option of, oh, well I can either do this, go out with my friends or something, or study for this big test that I have tomorrow,” Haley said. “You know, you got to choose. Even though you don’t want to do it. You’re gonna have to study for the test, because in the long run, that’s what’s gonna be more important, and that’s what you’re gonna kind of have to do. “

But even a tree couldn’t grow without its roots—just as Haley couldn’t have made it this far without his loved ones pushing him beyond his limits.

“One time when Michael said he got bored at school because he knew everything that his teacher was teaching, [so] he said he’d teach his classmates,” Haley’s mother Maritza Amaya said. “I always made sure he had a healthy and peaceful living situation. His father and I went the extra mile so he felt supported in every possible way. I feel that providing that environment for Michael helped make him the extraordinary young man he is now.”

Over the years of hard work, Haley used his years of experience to determine his success criteria.

“My definition of success is just if you have a goal in mind or dream, the success would be achieving that or taking the proper steps to achieve that goal,” Haley said. “And success is subjective to each person. And so it depends on what goal you have. For me, my goal is to in the short term [to] become valedictorian of the school, graduate, and get into a good college. And I think I’m taking many good steps to get there.”

Since his early school years, Haley showed he was different from his peers by having a remarkable academic drive.

“And then I remember specifically around fifth grade, I was starting to do a little bit of studying on my own, just so I can, I guess you could say, ‘kind of show off’ when I’m in class, and just kind of be like, Oh, look, I already know how to do this and stuff,” Haley said. “By the time I got into middle school, I was already put into Advanced Math classes, double accelerated path is what they called it. So I got into Algebra One by seventh grade. And in eighth grade I did geometry, and that kind of just leads into now, where I just kept trying to do that, kept trying to be the best.”