Summary: 14 year old prodigy is going to a university on a full scolarship and goes to New Hampshire after Maine refused to let her stay in dorms.
“Robert Dana, dean of students at the University of Maine, said residence halls don’t have enough supervision for a 14-year-old and that dorm staff members are trained to help older teenagers.”
I agree completely with this. Furthermore, anyone that’s seen what dorms can be like at university will fully agree that sticking a naive homeschooled 14 year old with little life experience is a recipe for disaster. The student and her mother are naive in thinking that the student is being discriminated against. She’s being protected.
Well, the other freshmen don’t have so much life experience either. Why would it necessarily be a disaster? The more irresponsible aspects of college life are usually confined to those students who want to practice them. If she doesn’t want to participate, I don’t think anybody would force her to do so. And if she did so well up to this point, I don’t think she’s so impressionable that she would instantly run to over-indulge in those activities.
Mind you, I understand why the college might not want such a responsibility, and I also understand some of the fears involved, but I don’t think that she would be better off if, for example, she were to live with her parents all throughout college and then jump into the real world all at once after graduating. She wouldn’t be better prepared for that later than she is now.
Not that “legal drinking age” has ever done much to dissuade American college students from drinking. (But yeah, I recognize that wasn’t really your point.)
SK is, as virtually always, right. (Although there IS a pretty big difference between 14 and 18, particularly “leaving the nest” at those respective ages.) It is probably as much as anything else a matter of the Maine school not wanting anything “bad” to happen to a 14 year old while on their watch, and all the bad PR that would stem from that (not to mention litigation). Not that throwing a kid into the dorms would automatically condemn the kid to being debauched by his environment or whatever, but you know, big downside, not all that much of an upiside, ergo not “worth the risk” for the school.
CH: Maybe New Hampshire does and Maine doesn’t (and/or is more effective at keeping them that way) and so they’re more comfortable taking on a gifted young’un like this?
It’d be kinda nice if the article were a little longer and more detail-packed. Eh well.
Lauren was home-schooled as a youngster, and skipped fourth, seventh and eighth grades. In her senior year, she’s taking advanced placement courses in Latin and English, plus calculus, physics, anatomy, history and two other courses. She also finds time for singing and drama.
See, I wish I had known that I (or any other student) could work ahead and skip grades like this. Even in high school, it’s possible to graduate in under three years here if you take advantage of night school and summer school.
IMO it should be a REQUIREMENT to make sure every student knows every route available to them. I was personally fucked over by the system too many times. If I could work at a pace appropriate to my abilities, and I don’t mean to sound arrogant because I believe this applies to MOST people, I would’ve saved myself a lot of wasted time.
I’ll be happier at UWO next year when the class isn’t held back by the slowest students, and they get fucked over instead of everyone else.
Wow its the complete opposite of Revenge of the Nerds.
I think they made the right choice. That kid is way to younge to be hanging around in an area filled with possible rapist and emotionaly unstable people.
I lived in the dorms at the University of Missouri for four months. It was a nightmare - the druggie roommate, the drinking, annoying assholes, not being able to study in peace, having to sleep with earplugs…
Unless they put her in some academic dorm, then it’s like playing roulette: sometimes you get a good floor, other times you get fucked (like me)
My experience at Missouri State has been that you can pretty much get either extreme (too much or too little noise and things happening) at will, since each residence hall is geared toward different things. I haven’t had to put up with much bullshit, since I’ve always picked the quieter places on campus.
kids like this are typically heavily coddled by their parents too and I can bet that the mother would come running and fussing the first time her kid was treated like any normal freshman gets treated from time to time. So yea I agree with Maine too.
In response to Hades, I have thought about similar things myself. Neither of my parents graduated from college and were never urged to do well academically so they never knew what higher learning was all about. One of my good friends from high school who is also in grad school now had a grandfather who got his phd and gave him all kinds of advice on where and what to do. My friend did skip grades as a result. I always envied him because of all the advice he had. Although, I don’t think it is always the best thing. You lose out a lot on life by being forced through it. I always enjoyed not having many responsibilities. This kid will never be allowed that.
Off topic, but I remember reading about a kid that went ot a college at age 12 and graduated at age 15. He was hailed as a genius for graduating so early. Then at the end of the article they stated how he graduated with a 2.0 average. There are a whole lot of people that can graduate with a 2.0 average at age 15. Ever since that article I tend to look at these type of kids differently.
Yeah, I agree. The genius of these kids is usually overstated. When I read about the grades this girl skipped, my first response was “that’s not prodigious. Anyone could’ve done it.”
I also enjoy not having many responsibilities. I HATE not having ANY responsibilities though. When I can sit in a class for over an hour while a teacher tries to bring some retarded student up to speed, that pisses me off. I’m not saying a teacher should cater to whatever teaching style I’m in the mood for, but I shouldn’t be wasting hours of my time when I could be working and getting credits ten times as fast as when I’m being held back.
Anybody with the proper entourage, funds and if caretaken at an early age and waste their time into learning what they are made to learn can do that. They are not genius. Just focused people. And I personaly think that when you give out that far, you have failures in much other fields. And let’s not forget the fact that you do /need/ the willpower to do this kind of stuff.
I dont know about Maine, but in NY homeshooling is frowned upon. I think that she does not have enough social skills to live near a bunch of crazy18-23 year olds. BTW-Who goes to high school at age 10?
EDIT: I remember reading a small blurb of a local article that showed that a kid who was 7 years old and in the 8th grade with an IQ of a measly 95. Im not impressed with an average human with robotic ambitions. To think I had reach an IQ of 120 by that age already. The article was all about disproving the real cognative abilities of these children. The author told me, that the public wouldnt eat it up as much.It also cited sevral other kids.
-Dont take these people seriously is the only thing im trying to prove.
My suitemates watch a lot of TV. 
Wow its the complete opposite of Revenge of the Nerds.