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NORTH ATTLEBORO

David Tarrant always knew what he wanted.

Long fascinated by computers, his desire to one day become a video game designer lead him to Tri-County Regional TechnicalVocational High School and its computer information systems program.

"I felt it had a much better program than the other schools around," said David, 19, who had his last day as a high school student Friday.

But it wasn't smooth sailing for David, whose junior year was filled with self-doubt and a battle with depression. "It was sort of a combination of things," he said. "I was disenchanted, so I didn't know where I wanted to go. I lost interest in everything."

His grades suffered so greatly that he had to repeat junior year. Studying philosophy, he said, helped him find himself again and pushed the drive to succeed back to his mind.

This year, the results were obvious. In April, David was a guest speaker at Cisco Networking Academy's 10-year Anniversary Event at the Statehouse.

David is a graduate of the program and received his A-plus Certification.

"Next year, I'll be scraping up some money for college and planning to go to Bristol Community College," David said. "I hope to study networking there. Last year made me realize I really do enjoy it."