MOSES LAKE - A Frontier Middle School eighth-grader talked about his plans to become a computer engineer and came home with first place in the regional Gear Up Career Showplace competition.

The 2013 competition drew 23 schools.

Jah-Mali Jackson was required to make a short video and give a presentation, complete with slides. "A proper presentation with lots of details and facts," he said.

He worked on the presentation for two or three weeks, he said, with his Gear Up counselor Carlos Hernandez. Preparation is crucial. 'If you're not prepared, you're not going to be that good," Jackson said.

Eye contact matters, too. In fact, that's one reason Jah-Mali thought he had a pretty good chance at placing near the top. Few of the other presenters were making eye contact, he said, and most of their presentations were either too long or too short.

He was nervous while he was watching the other speakers, he said. But "usually when I get up there in front of the crowd, I just be myself and the nervousness goes away," he said.

Though he's still in eighth grade he's decided on computer hardware engineering as a career, he said, and picked his college. He's getting ready for the University of Washington.

In his search for a college he looked at admission polices, tuition rates, grade point average requirements, financial aid requirements and other admissions-related information. It's never too early to start getting ready, he said.