Senior Spotlight: Joseph Brandenburger

Joseph Mathias Brandenburger, your local butcher, musician, and powerlifter, is a man of many talents, skills, and traits. Born on July 17, 2002, Joseph, more commonly known as “Joey”, was raised by his parents, Tom and Janice Brandenburger. Joey has a younger sister, Ava; two older sisters in college, Emma and Isabel; a brother-in-law, Michael; and nephew named Aviv. Joey has around 100 first cousins. “Family events are pretty chaotic and hard to organize,” says Joey. Some of Joey's favorite family vacations include going to Charleston, South Carolina and New York. His reviews? As for South Carolina, he said, “I particularly liked that trip because I got to see the ocean and the navy base; it gave me a little insight into my dad's career in the navy.” Joey's least favorite trip was New York City because “New York smells like feet and there are way too many people.”

Joey lives in the country on an acreage where he spends his time playing video games and enjoying his time outside, mostly accompanied by a gun and his dogs. If Joey is inside, he is usually found upstairs in his room playing Skyrim or watching The Office or the Big Bang Theory. Some of Joey's other favorite inside activities include playing his drums or his guitar. Joey’s all-time favorite film is The Lord of the Rings series. Joey enjoys the series so much he said this, “if I could take a vacation anywhere, it would be to New Zealand where they filmed the Lord of the Rings, and I would walk the trail to Mordor.” Joey does not have any favorite books and when asked why he declared that “books are for people that don't own T.V.’s”. 

Joey has had a strong presence in the class of 2020 since middle school when he moved to the public school and immediately made friends. He is involved with a variety of extracurricular activities including band, jazz band, choir, all-state choir, jazz choir, tennis, E-sports, powerlifting, and has also been inducted into the National Honor Society. Joey is also involved in his community and participates in his church, youth group, and his very interesting job. A fun fact about Joey is he is the one and only butcher at Jack's Meat Market. He says “somebody has to do it, so it might as well be me.” 

Some of Joey's favorite high school memories include powerlifting, band and choir. However, his absolute favorite memory from high school was when he allegedly stole Mr. Milne's name tag off of his door. Overall, he says high school was not too bad and fairly easy, which is reasonable since Joey has a natural understanding of math and science. 

When Joey graduates high school he is going to attend Dakota State University, where he plans to study computer science and get a minor in math. He plans to “make computer programs and get rich.” In 10 years, Joey plans to be a successful computer programmer with lots of money and a family, which is promising considering Joey's bright future ahead.