Many people know sophomore Bobby Brotherton for his enthusiasm about energy drinks. “I average about two-and-a-half, three a week, except for [this] last week,” he said. “I hardly got any sleep… ‘Back to the Future’ came out on Netflix, so naturally I stayed up watching that.”

Now five weeks into his sophomore year, Brotherton said that he’s “more used to what high school is really like [and] it’s easier in that regard. But given the specific circumstances under which the year began, it’s been a little bit more of a challenge.”

However, Brotherton said that he has been doing his best to keep in touch with those in the La Salle community through Zoom, Schoology, and occasionally email.

This semester, Brotherton is taking Algebra 2, Christology/Paschal Mystery, English 2, Health 2, Honors Chemistry, Spanish 2, and World History 2. 

Honors Chemistry is his favorite class. “I’ve always had an interest in science, specifically chemistry,” he said. “It’s fun to play around with chemicals, safely of course.”

Brotherton has had a chemistry set ever since he was 12 years old. “Of course I did the classic experiment where you turn a penny into gold,” he said. “I also burned a little bit of magnesium a couple times and other than that, there were about 400 [other experiments] you could do.”

With anything Brotherton does, he tries to see how he could apply it to the future and do something with it, including chemistry. 

In order to stay organized with school work, Brotherton tries to make a habit of writing down everything he has to do. 

“Sometimes I use a planner, sometimes I just use a sheet of paper, and sometimes I use a spiral notebook,” he said. “I wouldn’t say I necessarily do it in any specific order, it mostly depends on the length of the assignment that I have at a certain time. I would do the one that I thought would take the longest first and then sort of work my way down.”

When Brotherton gets stressed out, he uses bike riding as an outlet to calm himself down.

“Normally I’d just go on a bike ride or something, [for about] ten miles or so,” he said. “[I’ll] take my stress out on the pedals and then once I become a bit more calm and collected, I’ll take a look back at it.”

Moving forward, Brotherton is hoping to take biology. “I’ve also always had an interest in how life works,” he said. “I like to learn how stuff works, and that’s another reason why I like chemistry. Aside from that, [I’m also interested in] probably calculus, because you can apply that in computer programming.”

Outside of school, in addition to riding his bike, Brotherton likes to swim and spend time with his friends and family, along with looking online to find interesting things he can try on his own.

Brotherton found out he was a “gearhead” by searching the internet, which means he is interested in old cars. “You can tinker with [old cars] pretty much any way you want, with newer cars you can’t really do that,” he said. 

Brotherton said that he is trying to buy a project car between now and next summer to start fixing it up and make it “half original and half [his] own.”

A piece of advice Brotherton would give to other students is to focus on school, but also find time for other things. 

“School is definitely something important that you should focus on, but don’t let it completely take over your life,” he said. “Just make sure you’re not spending too much, or too little, time on school, and that really goes for anything. Just make sure you [have] variety in how you spend your time.”