This article is a long-ongoing remembrance of my best friend, Miles Schnieder.
Early Life Miles grew up in a loving home in Watkinsville, GA Son of Natalie Schnieder and Brian Schnieder, Miles cares deeply for his parents. He was born with an older brother and role model, Ben Schnieder. Ben is currently a junior in high school. As a kid and teenager, Miles continued to look up to his older brother, Ben, who is also in a band. They performed for the high school talent show in 2025. He has always treated both Ben and his parents with enormous respect since infancy. Mrs. Schnieder continues to work as an English teacher at the local Oconee County High School. Mr. Schnieder has been working as a Neurophysiological Monitoring Technologist for the past few years.
By age three, Miles could read and write his own name. In Watkinsville, Miles developed a strong passion for instruments and learning. Since early childhood, he'd often scroll through Wikipedia in search of new information. Incredibly well-read, he applied his knowledge to his studies in his elementary school aptly titled, High Shoals Elementary School (HSES) for short. Attracting attention from teachers, Miles soared above his peers in his elementary school. He'd often outperform almost, if not all of his peers, in every subject. He developed a special love for science and math. Miles found inspiration and positive reinforcements on his education journey from his 5th-grade math and science teacher, Mr. Garland. He had a high reading level and an extremely high math and science level. His worst subject, which has stayed this way throughout his life, is English. He often scored the highest on the MAP Math test for Georgia in his elementary school. This pattern stayed frequent throughout his schooling.
Middle School In middle school, Miles kept up his streak of impressive acts of intelligence. He soon became friends with the influx of new people middle school brought. His middle school combined three different elementary schools into one. Oconee County Elementary School, High Shoals Elementary School, and Colham Ferry Elementary School. Miles soon befriended a few of his peers, one standout being Aarav Agrawal, an impressive kid of Indian descent. He had recently moved from Ohio, where he took math a year higher than available for the normal student. Aarav took Algebra I during seventh grade. He found more positive figures among teachers like Mr. Jansen and Dr. Eversole. Whilst competition was harder, he still scored highly impressive marks and carried on with all As throughout the entirety of middle school. He stayed relatively static in new developments, mostly hanging out with friends from Elementary school, such as Levi Jones and Anna Patterson. Miles wasn't the type to have much of a social life, though, other than a message here or there.
In seventh grade, things got more interesting. He soon became friends with other Intelligents due to his joining Math Counts. He made friends with two notable figures in particular, Harrison Bluhm and Sean Kong. Both were notable for different reasons. Harrison soon became one of Miles' best friends throughout 7th, 8th, and the entirety of high school. Sean was notable for a different reason. Sean seemed nice on the surface, but he saw Miles as competition rather than a friend. Sean was a contender for the highest GPA in the grade for years. Realistically, Sean was more skilled at mathematics, but paled in comparison to the true intelligence of the real-world events and was less well-read than someone like Miles. Miles took up the bass clarinet throughout middle school band. He also learned trumpet for the 8th-grade double band. He had a huge passion for music, shown by his affiliation with not only both of those instruments, but also the piano and drums. In the band, he befriended Olive and Calvin, as well as a few other important figures. Olive and Calvin grew to become some of the most prominent figures in his inner circle.
His new friend group had started to take shape due to the extracurricular activities he took. He shared Science Olympiad with Harrison and Olive, where he ended up placing second in Rocks and Minerals (R&M) at the regional competition and third in the state with Olive as his R&M partner. Harrison scored first in Hereditary at regionals as well. These three were unstoppable during Science Olympiad. Miles also participated in the Jr. Beta Club and in Jazz Band. In Jazz Band, he plays bass clarinet. After school let out and middle school had passed by, his new friend group was quite clear. He stayed friends with everybody he was already friends with, but his new group was predominantly Miles, Olive, Harrison, Calvin, Aarav, Levi, and Kennedih. They called very often over the summer and hung out pretty often. Our story lies here, still being continued as of now. We don't know what high school and 8th grade summer entails, but I will update this page.