I’ll get it out of the way that I am jealous. I wish I had been able to do what she did. I also think that if more people cared about education on this level, we could really get a significantly smarter population and start to solve some of the problems in the world.
Having said that, I have concerns over what her life is like. I would need a lot more details to feel comfortable that this kind of lifestyle is healthy for someone. She missed out on most of her childhood at this point, a time most adults look back on fondly as a time when they had no responsibilities. I have so many follow-up questions that the article doesn’t address.
Is she truly self-motivated or does she have someone like her parents urging her to do this?
Given a choice, would she do it again?
What was her workload like? Was she constantly studying or is she lucky enough to not need to?
Also, more for my curiosity than anyone else’s well-being:
How do you even sign a 10 year old up for college?
Do professors give leniency to an 11 year old in class or are they getting the same experience an 18 year old would get?
These are all really excellent questions. My son skipped a grade early in gradeschool, and I am fortunate enough to have a friend who had a similar experience as this young lady (albeit not to the same extent) being hyper-accelerated through school, so we were able to interview him about his experience when making decisions about how to handle our exceptional kiddo’s education.
It was not a fun conversation, and as a result we elected to just let our son take advanced classes when possible and not really push to have him skip additional grades or do any of the wacky stuff with enrolling in college as a child or what have you. Of course we’re going to push him to take stuff that is challenging whenever possible, and I’d love for him to graduate high school with as much college credit as possible–but I’m not about to steal his youth in pursuit of putting a PhD on his wall before he’s old enough to vote.
The short version is that our friend was a very miserable child. His advancement essentially meant he had no peers, and especially among teenagers, the acceleration just put a bullseye on his back, since the people who surrounded him either resented him or saw him as a target for bullying. Even professional educators at times resented him. He was adamant that it was a thing he would never put his own children through.
Is that a typical experience? I have no idea; after all, being a child in higher education is already well outside ordinary experience. But the story was enough to make me worry for the child whenever I read a headline like this.
I was an advanced learner and started college at 16. The only reason I didn’t start at 14 was because I had to get a highschool diploma or GED to qualify for financial assistance. It took me 18 months after acceptance into university to get the adult education diploma.
Up until then I had moved along with my class, always placed in the advanced courses.
Basically school sucked for me.
In my experience being in the 99+% sucks socially growing up and even into adulthood. There is no easy path for these kids. They do not fit in anywhere. There is no “right” path for all of them. Each has to figure it out on their own and suffer through it.
Do professors give leniency to an 11 year old in class or are they getting the same experience an 18 year old would get?
If I was going to guess and be pessimistic: her parents were in class with her. She likely wasn’t living on campus at 10-14 and can’t drive so she’s likely escorted.
I was accelerated (though nowhere like this) and for me, personally, it wasn’t great. 14 was not the right age for me to decide to be a doctor and enroll. I did the whole thing and I have the diploma but I never worked in the field because I had completely burned out by then.
Of course I’m also AuDHD and maybe my mental health wouldn’t be any better in different circumstances, we’ll never know.
Whenever this topic comes up, people ignore the other side. I was placed in Remedial classes, which might as well have been called Deceleration. Placed in classes with bullies for all of K-12 just because some over eager physiologist decided I had a learning disability and my over protective mother went along with it. The high schools was incredibility stratified having four different levels, not including special ed. I was placed in the bottom rung every time. When they brought me in to discuss what classes I should take in high school, they never actually explained anything, but apparently that counts as agreeing to it.
My social life sucked, my academic life sucked, and I hate everything to do with that place. I would love to be able to look back and only regret the social life being bad. At least my options would be better two shitty community colleges.
And if you’re wondering about my intelligence, I’ve never completed a single college course, but routinely get mistaken for an engineering graduate, even by engineering professors.
I’m really torn on news like this.
I’ll get it out of the way that I am jealous. I wish I had been able to do what she did. I also think that if more people cared about education on this level, we could really get a significantly smarter population and start to solve some of the problems in the world.
Having said that, I have concerns over what her life is like. I would need a lot more details to feel comfortable that this kind of lifestyle is healthy for someone. She missed out on most of her childhood at this point, a time most adults look back on fondly as a time when they had no responsibilities. I have so many follow-up questions that the article doesn’t address.
Also, more for my curiosity than anyone else’s well-being:
These are all really excellent questions. My son skipped a grade early in gradeschool, and I am fortunate enough to have a friend who had a similar experience as this young lady (albeit not to the same extent) being hyper-accelerated through school, so we were able to interview him about his experience when making decisions about how to handle our exceptional kiddo’s education.
It was not a fun conversation, and as a result we elected to just let our son take advanced classes when possible and not really push to have him skip additional grades or do any of the wacky stuff with enrolling in college as a child or what have you. Of course we’re going to push him to take stuff that is challenging whenever possible, and I’d love for him to graduate high school with as much college credit as possible–but I’m not about to steal his youth in pursuit of putting a PhD on his wall before he’s old enough to vote.
The short version is that our friend was a very miserable child. His advancement essentially meant he had no peers, and especially among teenagers, the acceleration just put a bullseye on his back, since the people who surrounded him either resented him or saw him as a target for bullying. Even professional educators at times resented him. He was adamant that it was a thing he would never put his own children through.
Is that a typical experience? I have no idea; after all, being a child in higher education is already well outside ordinary experience. But the story was enough to make me worry for the child whenever I read a headline like this.
I was an advanced learner and started college at 16. The only reason I didn’t start at 14 was because I had to get a highschool diploma or GED to qualify for financial assistance. It took me 18 months after acceptance into university to get the adult education diploma.
Up until then I had moved along with my class, always placed in the advanced courses.
Basically school sucked for me.
In my experience being in the 99+% sucks socially growing up and even into adulthood. There is no easy path for these kids. They do not fit in anywhere. There is no “right” path for all of them. Each has to figure it out on their own and suffer through it.
If I was going to guess and be pessimistic: her parents were in class with her. She likely wasn’t living on campus at 10-14 and can’t drive so she’s likely escorted.
I was accelerated (though nowhere like this) and for me, personally, it wasn’t great. 14 was not the right age for me to decide to be a doctor and enroll. I did the whole thing and I have the diploma but I never worked in the field because I had completely burned out by then.
Of course I’m also AuDHD and maybe my mental health wouldn’t be any better in different circumstances, we’ll never know.
Whenever this topic comes up, people ignore the other side. I was placed in Remedial classes, which might as well have been called Deceleration. Placed in classes with bullies for all of K-12 just because some over eager physiologist decided I had a learning disability and my over protective mother went along with it. The high schools was incredibility stratified having four different levels, not including special ed. I was placed in the bottom rung every time. When they brought me in to discuss what classes I should take in high school, they never actually explained anything, but apparently that counts as agreeing to it.
My social life sucked, my academic life sucked, and I hate everything to do with that place. I would love to be able to look back and only regret the social life being bad. At least my options would be better two shitty community colleges.
And if you’re wondering about my intelligence, I’ve never completed a single college course, but routinely get mistaken for an engineering graduate, even by engineering professors.