Scott Barnes
Staff Writer
“I was born and raised in Bloomington. When I was in junior high my stepdad got a job in Peoria and my mom had to work in Bloomington, so we lived 
happily between in a little town called Mackinaw.
It was a crazy small town—like super small compared to what I was used to. And to get away from that, I was super rebellious.
My mom always said I’m an old soul.
Family is family. You can’t leave family behind, but I left my mom’s house to move in with my dad because it was just too draining on me.
I think my mom needed one less child to take care of. She had…too many kids at the time, and she needed to focus on them and their disabilities. They were much younger than I was and I knew that I could go off on my own and take of myself, so I moved in with my dad until I finished high school.
I like to create things. I definitely like to build and make something that’s useful for more than one person. I want to benefit society.
I’m really good at mathematics. I’m really good at understanding concepts, open floor plans, spatial design, and I’m also an art student.
I’m always excelling at drawing and writing; the more fun side of things, I say, because I hate math. It is a good combination of intellectual challenge as well as creative freedom and fun. I didn’t want to be someone who sat at a desk all day but I didn’t want to get an arts degree and not have food at night so architecture is a good in-between.
I work two jobs and I have a sport that I consider my third job, so it’s a lot.
I shoot rifles competitively. I shoot a lot and I’m also a rifle coach now, so I spend a lot of time training the younger kids.
In Georgia, just last weekend for spring break, I trained with a couple of Olympic gold medalists in the army marksmanship unit on Fort Benning…
I’m going to go to the Olympics. I’m actually training hopefully to go 20/20. It takes a lot more than that, but I train three times a week…That’s my goal; if I could do anything, I would go to the Olympics—I would absolutely love that.”