MACON COUNTY, Ga. — Chance Simpson modeled his desire for success after his older brother.
"My brother Ronald Simpson, he graduated from Bethune Cookman and now he's in the military right now," Simpson said.
Through his community service work, he realized a lot of kids in Marshallville grew up without role models.
"I understand that everyone is not like me. Everybody doesn't have the chances and opportunity that I have," he said.
He decided to lead by example through his academics by accelerating his high school credits with dual enrollment classes at South Georgia Technical College.
"I'm done with all my high school classes. I took all the minimum requirements, so I'm completely done with high school. Right now for college, I currently have 28 credits and I need 66 to graduate, so I'll be able to graduate December 10, 2020," Simpson said.
At 16-years-old, he's already finished high school, working on his associates degree and runs track for Macon County High School.
"After track meets, I probably have to go straight to my laptop and do my work [and] stay up nights. It took hours out of my sleep, but I have to keep on going and in the end, it's going to pay off for me," he said.
He hopes his success will be the inspiration his community needs.
"Marshallville has some leaders and not everybody has to be popular or anything to set an example for the community so I saw that, I was wondering why can't it just be me," he said.
Simpson has a 3.9 GPA. He wants to run track for Brown University and major in pre-med.
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