How to Graduate from College in 18 Months or Less

I announced casually on Twitter recently that I graduated from college with a B.A. and M.A. at age 19, just two years after I graduated from high school. A certain person (whom I blocked) insisted this was impossible. Then insisted that it was proof I’d gone to a college that must have far lower academic standards than most. Then demanded proof. I actually poked around in my garage for something that I felt comfortable putting on line, and took photos of my scholarship letter, dated 1988, and my graduation certificate with my M.A., dated August 1990. But that wasn’t enough.

Some part of me was absurdly flattered at the idea that what I’d done wasn’t just unusual, but impossible. I know it’s not. Other people graduate from college quickly. Most of them tend toward the sciences or math. Most of them are “geniuses” of one category or another, who moved through elementary and high school quickly, as well. Some were home schooled. I wasn’t really any of those. I got good grades throughout school and I did well, but I don’t know how many of my teachers or fellow students would have thought of me as particularly smart.

But I was bored a lot as a child, and I felt constantly that adults were standing in my way, telling me how quickly I was allowed to move through material. I hit college at a particular time, when you signed up for classes electronically, but before the computers were sophisticated enough to demand that you’d taken the proper prerequisites. So I took classes out of order, which helped me not to have to worry about timing. I also spent my sophomore year at a German Gymnasium, which meant that my German language skills were extremely good. I took a lot of AP classes, tested out of other GE coursework, and even took a couple of correspondence courses in German that were at the junior and senior level (this was part of a deal with my father, who wanted me to stay in high school for my senior year even though I was bored and wanted to graduate).

I started taking classes the summer before my freshman year officially began. I remember one of my professors saw my photograph and name in the paper the last week of class, and realized I wasn’t supposed to be taking it. He gave me a bit of a talking to.

“You’d have gotten an A if you’d waited to take this until later,” he insisted.

“I’m sure you’re right, but I learned so much and I had so much fun.”

I’m  not sure I can express the relief that I felt in being able to ignore what everyone else thought was the “right pace” to take classes. There was one particular professor in my department who made it his purpose in life to delay me as much as he could by sheer nastiness. But I even got around him, getting accepted to his alma mater for a PhD program (Princeton) because I had a perfect score on the GRE. When I went to visit Princeton for the first time, I discovered that instead of them accepting me because I was so brilliant and young, no one had any idea I was still a teenager. I could have done better there if I’d waited, too, but I don’t know that I would have felt the sheer joy of the freedom I experienced.

I took the maximum number of credit hours you could take, plus correspondence courses where I could, and then I found out that I was allowed to ask for permission to take more credit hours if I had good enough grades, so I kept pushing and pushing to see when I’d reach the limit (it was 26 credit hours).

Did I have a real life beyond my studying? Not much of one, no. I went on a handful of dates, but discovered fairly quickly that no one male or female was much interested in someone who was as ambitious and arrogant as I was at the time. I was undiagnosed autistic, as well, which tended to interfere in a lot of social situations, but I don’t know that waiting a few years would have helped much.

I might have been fast and smart, but what was perhaps most unusual about me was that I wasn’t the kind of prodigy that people expected. I was in literary analysis, which required sophisticated language and understanding. The German language skills aside, I was in classes with some of the best minds in the world when it came to literature (Elaine Showalter, for instance) and I held my own.

Sometimes I’m sad that I feel like I wasted all that. I remember someone saying to me directly at one point, “you don’t get a PhD from Princeton to stay home and take care of children.” But, in fact, that was precisely what I did. You might feel sorry for my children, becoming the target of all my energy, but I suppose they turned out well enough. They survived getting scholarships at big, important universities, and we are all surviving me going back to the workforce. I’m not nearly as smart or fast as I used to be. It’s very clear to me now that I will never have that back. I’m smart, but not at that level.

I suppose I have to content myself with the skills I’ve learned on the side. I’m still not good at social interaction and struggle to guess at the unspoken assumptions that are part of many conversations. But I’m much more competent than I was at nineteen. And I learned compassion along the way of a difficult life. That was never on my list of things to learn, and if you’d asked me back then if I wanted to grow up to me an old woman who could weep with the best of them, I’d have run away screaming.

But here I am. I will never regret doing college the way that I did. It is a funny story to tell at cocktail parties (not that I ever go to those). And if you don’t believe me, like the troll on Twitter, that I was once brilliant and a prodigy at Princeton at age 19 who now works in a call center, then I guess that’s your problem, not mine. You probably have no idea about the real lives of the people around you, and you might want to work on that giant ego of yours. It could get in the way as you try to fit through the door at the next party you’re at.