Nick Sinanan has more hob­bies and tal­ents than most peo­ple will have in their en­tire life. And he is just 13. The Eighth-Grade Stu­dent of the Year at Lafayette Parish Pub­lic School in New Or­leans is ex­cel­lent in school and out. Nick was born in Trinidad, and his fa­ther's job brought his fam­i­ly to the US in 2002. He calls his par­ents his he­roes. Nick runs on Lafayette Mid­dle School's track team and is cap­tain of the school's soc­cer team.

He al­so plays ice hock­ey, is a black belt in karate, a mem­ber of the chil­dren's Mar­di Gras out­fit Krewe of Au­gus­tus, a scu­ba div­er and mix­es mu­sic on turnta­bles in his spare time. He al­so ex­cels at aca­d­e­mics. "My favourite sub­ject, be­sides lunch, is math and sci­ence," he said, jok­ing­ly. A south Lafayette res­i­dent, Nick takes a 30-minute bus ride across town to at­tend Lafayette Mid­dle School. "I de­cid­ed to go there be­cause of the en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ences acad­e­my," he said. He is a con­ser­va­tion­ist at heart and at­tend­ing the acad­e­my guar­an­tees a spot at Lafayette High's Health Sci­ences Acad­e­my or North­side's En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ences Acad­e­my.

Through the en­vi­ron­men­tal sci­ences acad­e­my, Nick has been able to trav­el to Grand Isle and plant black man­groves to help re­store the coast­line. "We re­al­ly are help­ing peo­ple," he said. The coast serves at the first line of pro­tec­tion against hur­ri­canes, he said. Nick plans to at­tend Lafayette High and work to­ward his goal of be­com­ing a car­di­ol­o­gist. "He's had the dream of be­com­ing a med­ical doc­tor since he was lit­tle," Nick's fa­ther, Vish­nu Sinanan, said. Nick has prac­ticed karate for ten years, and hopes to soon move up to in­struc­tor lev­el.

Nick is a thrill-seek­er, and along with karate re­cent­ly learned to scu­ba dive. His fu­ture goals in­clude ob­tain­ing his pi­lot's li­cense, and his dream job would be a race­car dri­ver for Fer­rari. He would be con­tent, how­ev­er, with be­com­ing a doc­tor and fly­ing to dif­fer­ent of­fices. "My par­ents are al­ways sup­port­ive of me and guide me the right way," he said. His par­ents said they are very proud that Nick nev­er quits any­thing. He al­ways sees a project or ac­tiv­i­ty to the end. "We try to in­still in Nick to do the right thing and be re­spect­ful and be re­spon­si­ble," Nick's moth­er, Denise Sinanan, said.