“I’m going [to college] with a group of people I’m tight with and we motivate each other.”

There are some seriously detail-oriented people in the world, but this Pathways Scholar takes it to a higher level. Brian’s imagined world, encapsulated in his volumes of creative writing, is digitized, and carefully archived and stored. So are his accompanying, artful illustrations.

Ask him about his fiction prose and Brian, a graduating senior in Newark, waxes philosophical: “A lot of great writing sits on the shoulders of passion.” But Brian also sees the beauty of modern, quality writing sitting in new, non-traditional spaces — even if his elders don’t yet recognize it.

“If the art and writing is strong and visually pleasing,” Brian says, “video games are becoming the best format to tell a story, if they’re done right.”

Brian is enrolled to start his undergraduate education this fall at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), where he has chosen computer science as his major. He wants to hone his coding skills and continue to draw and design.

“NJIT will be the perfect school for me,” Brian says. “It’s close by and it has everything — art, writing, and technology. I’m going there with a group of people I’m tight with and we motivate each other.”

Brian was born in Portugal, has served on his school’s student council, contributed to its student literary magazine and is a member of the National Honors Society. Brian says his writing is inspired by dystopian fiction, such as Aldous Huxley’s classic, Brave New World, but his future is bright, not bleak. Pathways, Brian says, played a strong role in his personal development.

“My history teacher got me and a friend of mine interested in the program,” Brian says. “It was always motivating to me that Pathways had art and writing contests. We also visited a couple of colleges in my freshman year to see what college life is like. Pathways played a part in building up my confidence.”