Raymond Zeng is a senior from Greenville, Mississippi, who formerly went to Cleveland High School. He has a wide variety of interests, but he mainly focuses on music production. He produces music in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) called FL Studio because “It’s the first DAW I used and it was pretty easy to learn,” stated Zeng.

With the help of fellow senior Myles Spillers, Zeng started the Wave Production Club, where they prepare music and DJ for school dances. They organize many of the dances while providing music with the new sound system in Shackleford Auditorium. Raymond’s favorite musical passion is drums and bass. He tentatively states that his favorite song is Doppelgänger by Haywyre but there are so many others that he likes as well. 

Raymond plans to do information security in the future, particularly penetration testing. This is when a company hires someone to try to break into their computer systems to find vulnerabilities in their system. He states that this “perfectly merges his passion for breaking stuff and computers.” He already has some experience with Python, a programming language that is commonly used by software engineers.

He takes a wide variety of courses but his favorite would have to be World War II. “I find World War II fascinating because of how recently all the horrors happened,” Zeng said. He worries that future generations will forget about the lessons learned from the war when it only happened 70 years ago. The rationing system in World War II particularly interests him. He is amazed by the grit people had to make it on the limited food, stating that he would “probably die without his daily meat.”  

He also enjoys playing “Counter Strike: Global Offensive” because of the “competitiveness, fast-thinking and teamwork.” “Counter Strike: Global Offensive” is a competitive first-person shooter released by Valve Entertainment with events watched by thousands across the world. “I used to be pretty good back in my day. I was close to the Global Elite tier which is the top one percent of players,” Zeng explained.  

Zeng is a huge fan of college sports but hates professional sports because “teams pay to win.” His favorite team in college football is the Alabama Crimson Tide. He one day plans on buying Clemson University and shutting it down. He doesn’t like Bama’s basketball team, however, being a fan of the Kentucky Wildcats. He has been a fan of both since he was able to speak and “hates the bandwagoners that come on every year.” He enjoys working out as well, at Stark almost every day with a dream to be built like a linebacker. He designed his own routine that he calls “push-pull-legs.” Anyone you ask will tell you that it has had pretty great results.

At the beginning of junior year, Raymond was very intimidated by the school. He heard many rumors about difficulty of classes and he was upset about having to leave his friends at Cleveland. However, Raymond states that “he has found a new family here at MSMS that he will be forever thankful for.” Now during his senior year, Raymond is one of the most prominent seniors here at MSMS. He hopes to inspire a new generation of students who are interested in music production.