People

By Guy D. Garcia

Sophomore David Huang is into the higher numbers of higher education. After racking up a first-year average of 3.7 at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, he has a course load this semester of 16 hours of organic chemistry, biology, calculus and microcomputer graphics. The only small number Huang is concerned with is his age. He is nine years old. "I want to be a doctor, a surgeon," he says, "but I'll probably have to wait until I'm 21 before they'll let me practice." The only child of Thai immigrants, he was reading at age two (before he could talk), at four scored 159 on an IQ test (140 is generally considered genius level), also at four taught his chemical engineer father BASIC computer language (are you keeping up with all this?) and finished high school at eight. His mother, who started reading to him during the pregnancy, devotes herself full time to his education, driving him to university and then walking him across the street. David reports he gets along fine with others in his class. "I have friends of all ages," he explains, "but the ones I ride bikes with are five or six." He also likes cartoons, particularly Woody Woodpecker, He-Man and Scooby-Doo.