Accepted into high school at the age of nine, 13-year-old Michael Hoenack currently studies medicinal biochemistry as a freshman at the Barrett Honors College program. Photo by Luu Nguyen
Michael Hoenack is 13 years old, enrolled in the Barrett Honors College program, and his bedtime is as late as it needs to be for him to get all his college schoolwork done. Oftentimes, the medicinal biochemistry freshman says, that means staying up after midnight to get everything done.
Michael’s unique educational path started after he switched from an intensive private Catholic school, where he was learning second and third grade concepts in the first grade, into a public school. Bored by what he was learning (or rather, not learning), Michael says he asked the school if he could skip to third grade. They said no, and he transferred to a different school, and again to a smaller school when the second one showed little improvement. By then he was almost done with second grade, so instead of skipping to the third grade he just skipped third grade altogether.
The smaller school had shut down because it lacked enough students to remain open, so Michael says he returned to his first school and enrolled in a class that mixed the fourth and fifth grade. After accidently taking home a fifth grader’s math homework, he found he could understand it after his mother explained it to him.
He says he approached the school again about skipping ahead a math grade, remaining in fourth grade while doing fifth grade math. This time the school said yes, and he began taking math classes a year ahead of his grade level. But when he realized the difficulties he would encounter if this continued until the end of junior high, where he would have travel to and from the high school, he requested to skip again and have his grade be the same level as the math classes he was taking. The school said no.
The summer of his fifth grade year he studied algebra, he says, and then he approached the local high school to ask if he could test in. He received a C on the entrance exams (covering Freshman English and Algebra I) and was accepted into high school at the age of nine.
Part of the school’s concern with him skipping so much was that Michael would find it difficult to make friends, but he says this was not the case. Though he was terrified the first week of high school, he was quickly approached by a member of the marching band asking him to join. He did, noting they had to make a custom uniform for him. He’s still in contact with many of the friends he made in high school, he adds (Michael notes he does not have many friends his age, as they either don’t believe he’s a college student and mock him or they do believe him and are intimidated by him).
There tends to be an adjustment period between a couple of days to a week when people first meet him, Michael says. At first people tend to treat him as a 13 year old, but after they get to know him they treat him as a normal college student.
After college, Michael says he has two major options: he could attend medical school and then do internships before taking a job, or he could complete his master’s here and then get his doctorate. Of the two, he says he leans toward the second. As a career, he expresses interest in working with infectious diseases, including work with vaccines and antibiotics.
While many students his age have curfews and bedtimes, Hoenack finds himself staying sometimes past midnight to complete work.Photo by Luu Nguyen
Maria Hoenack, Michael’s mother, says there was never any thought of Michael waiting to attend college when he graduated high school. When he skipped junior high to start high school, it was understood by his parents he didn’t want to wait to go to college.
She says Barrett was the main appeal of ASU, noting that Michael was excited by the honors program and its various educational opportunities. Maria Hoenack adds she was pleased he’d be in a smaller community and not swallowed up by the main ASU campus.
Barrett did not offer residence to Michael when he was accepted into the college because of his young age, and Maria Hoenack says they did not press the point, happy to have Michael stay with his family. The family life has changed in that they now have two homes - aside from a house in Buckeye, they keep an apartment in Tempe about a mile away from the campus and one or both of his parents stays there with Michael, she explains.
“It’s like he goes to high school,” she says.
Michael’s independence has grown since starting college, constantly going to campus by himself to eat lunch and dinner and hang out in the student lounge, his mother notes.
Jeremy Hoenack, pilot and Michael’s father, says the family has a flight simulator with four screens that Michael practices on. He’s practiced flying fighter planes close to the ground and vintage planes with difficult controls. When he took his first flying lesson, the instructor did not even need to talk Michael through the landing procedure (the most dangerous part of flying), his father adds. Michael has not pursued flying much further than a few lessons, partly because of lack of time and because he can’t be a licensed pilot until 16, Jeremy Hoenack notes.
Michael took chemistry earlier than usual in high school, enrolling in the junior-level class as a freshman when others were taking biology. His passion for the subject developed then, Jeremy Hoenack says, culminating in him acting as a teacher’s assistant for his chemistry teacher senior year.
People frequently ask if Michael is some kind of kid genius, and Jeremy Hoenack counters he’s a hard worker. He’s never received any grade lower than an A, and “he will work until he drops” to ensure he does so.
Michael enjoys being a kid, playing with others in the park. It’s when he opens his mouth and speaks that you realize how adult he is, his father says.
When not studying or hanging out at the MU, Hoenack may be caught zipping by on campus on his yellow electric scooter.Photo by Luu Nguyen
He’s also into astronomy, attending all sorts of events at ASU.
“He’s super competent in a lot of different things,” Jeremy Hoenack says, possibly understating it a bit.
Chemical engineering sophomore Edward Reyes says he’s known Michael since high school. After transferring in, he noticed Michael was in a lot of his classes and became acquainted with him.
After graduating from high school a year ahead of him, Reyes says he did not know Michael was going to ASU until he saw him on campus one day and asked to have lunch with him to catch up. They still continue to have lunch occasionally, but Reyes notes he does not get to see him often because of their differing schedules and the fact that neither of them live on campus.
Reyes says he had thought he was doing well in life until he met Michael, a kid who was performing much better than him in their classes. Not only did Michael graduate high school young, but he did so with a near perfect GPA.
“It’s a novelty to have a peer his age in college,” he says. “The thing is, I know he’s going to get far.”
Michael is a driven, intelligent young man with a bright future ahead of him, and he’s gotten to where he is today through a devoted work ethic, Reyes explains.
More information on Michael Hoenack can be found at his website. Michael Hoenack himself can be frequently found on an electric scooter zipping around campus, possibly wearing mirrored shades (If you see him, wave).
Reach the writer at sarah.michelle.anderson@asu.edu
