Several dozen Garfield seniors received recognition from the National Merit Scholarship Program, a system of scholarships and commendation for students who score well on the PSAT. But only one Garfield senior, Victor Lindstrom, placed in the National Achievement Scholarship Program, which is given to 4,600 African-American students who did well on the test. Lindstrom, a semifinalist, earned a $2,500 scholarship.

That sounds prestigious. How’d you achieve such a feat?

I guess the key point here is that I’m black. If you’re black you can win it…I don’t know what the cutoff is for black people but I actually expected it even though I only got 95th percentile.

That’s pretty cool. Are your parents really proud of you? Are you really proud?

I was kind of expecting it because I’ve been in the 99th percentile since like 6th grade but my mom was pretty happy and my dad was kind of expecting it too.

Did they buy you a car or something?

No, no I didn’t get anything.

Oh that’s too bad. So where are you planning to go to college?

I think DeVry. I can get a four-year degree in less than three. That’s a joke. But I can get into the UW….If I don’t get into the schools that I want to get into I have a full scholarship to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

Ooh.

Third tier. Third tier school.

Wow. That’s impressive. Is that a good school?

I really don’t know much about it. All I know is that it’s in Nebraska. My mom wants me to go to Emory, but that’s in Georgia. I’m not sure I want to go to school in Georgia.

Actually I did catch a connecting flight in Atlanta.

How was that?

Um, I don’t know. It was Georgia. There was like…

All black people?

Yeah. The only chips you could find were Lay’s Barbeque. I went over the whole airport looking for some chips besides Lay’s Barbeque and it’s a huge airport and I saw a lot of black people but I couldn’t find any non-barbeque chips….Wait hold up I’m supposed to be interviewing you. Um…so how many people get this scholarship thing?

1600 in the country are semifinalists. 1300 finalist and 800 finalists.

So you got the highest award?

No I’m a semifinalist.

Are you notable for doing any other things besides being smart?

I do the occasional magic trick.

Yeah, I heard about that magic. So you’re performing in the talent show?

I am doing the talent show, yeah.

Are you going to be dueling magicians with [Zack Bornstein]?

Not at the talent show. People wanted to have a competition, but of course Zack doesn’t want to do that. (motions that Zack sucks) He sucks. Zack sucks. (laughter)…

But what are you going to do? Are you going to like cut someone in half?

No, I’m not going to cut anyone in half, no. I don’t want to talk about it and put out any expectations. It’s a secret. (While saying this, he gets out a pack of cards and starts fingering them expertly with one hand. He fans them out and rubs them against each other and fans them out again and cuts the deck with one hand and throws one up and catches it.) Me and Zack are working downtown at a restaurant, doing some magic at a restaurant.

What restaurant?

The Steelhead. Tell people to come down to the Steelhead if they want…it’s actually amazingly good food.